


Neat!

by messyfeathers



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Cecil is Mostly Human, Cute Dorks Falling In Love, M/M, Pre-Relationship, Typical Night Vale Weirdness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-24
Updated: 2013-11-05
Packaged: 2017-12-30 08:23:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 34,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1016326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/messyfeathers/pseuds/messyfeathers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the story of a not-quite-human radio host and a perfect scientist.  it’s a love story, if love is even real.  which Carlos believes about as much as Cecil believes in the moon (which is at least *slightly* more than he believes in mountains)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Anomaly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fate is not a scientifically proven concept. Then again neither is chance. Which is what makes the strange lights in the sky above the little desert town so very confounding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, this is my first story in this fandom to ever be longer than a single chapter, and I'm very excited to finally be sharing it! Before we get started, I just want to toss out there that this will most likely end up fizzling into quite a bit of fluff along the way, but it will have a plot I promise. I would also like to note that the first two chapters are going to be entirely setup and background on Carlos, so be forewarned there. Without further ado, let's get to the story now!

 "We're definitely lost." Carlos said as he used a flashlight to locate their car's location on the fold-out map. "Andie, how did you even get off the highway, you had one job!" He turned the map upside down in an attempt to pin down the last known mileage marker they had passed. 

"Do you want to drive?" Andrea asked rhetorically as she took a sip from her oversized foam fountain drink. 

"No," Carlos laughed, creasing the map back into some semblance of its original shape. 

"Then I suggest you shut your mouth," she teased, reaching across and taking the map from his hands, tossing it into the back seat. "It's really all your fault after all, Mr. I Don't Have A Smartphone." Carlos rolled his eyes dramatically and turned to look at the dark, flat desert outside the windows of the little station wagon. He and Andrea, his best friend since their freshman year of college, were in the middle of a cross-country road trip to his sister's wedding. The road trip was also jointly a bucket list item they were crossing off in celebration of Andrea's graduation with her masters in microbiology. Four years of long days researching and long nights in the practical application laboratory had earned them the much-needed vacation. Though now they were lost somewhere in Arizona with not a single headlight or taillight in sight. 

"We really are lost though, Andie." Carlos sighed. "We were supposed to be in Phoenix two hours ago. Brandon is gonna wonder why I haven't called from the hotel." He pulled out his cell phone in what he knew was a futile attempt. The outdated, cracked phone display was still black. 

"Seriously, Carlos, how were you even able to break a Nokia, they're practically tanks!" Carlos gave an empty laugh. 

"I guess I just have a way of breaking things." He pressed a few buttons on the phone in frustration before slipping it back into the pocket of his denim jacket. 

Andrea allowed her eyes to flicker from the road to glance over at him carefully. "How are things with you two anyway?" 

"Hm?" Carlos replied distractedly. 

"You and Brandon. I mean, it's your sister's wedding, and I'm flattered that you chose to get lost in the middle of nowhere with me, but shouldn't he be your plus one?" Carlos shrugged. "So, how are things?" she pressed.  

"They're great," Carlos replied too quickly. 

"I can always tell when you're bullshitting me," Andrea retorted dryly. 

"Things are, they're good," Carlos said a little less brightly. "We're just going through some stuff right now."

"Oh yeah?" Andrea replied a little more gently. "How so?" 

"I dunno, we just never see each other. I mean, it's not bad, it's comfortable. We're comfortable. Just. I get home from the lab, make myself dinner, work on my paper, then he gets home just around the time I'm getting tired." Andrea nodded understandingly. "It's okay though, I mean he'll usually be getting to bed while I'm still reading so it's not like we don't talk. You know, about our days and how things are going." Carlos smiled a little wider. "On Saturday nights we still have movie night every week."

"Mhm, and when was the last time you got laid?" Andrea asked wryly. Carlos felt his face flush. 

"You know, not every relationship has to just be about sex, Andie," he mumbled. 

"Only people who aren't getting any use that excuse." 

"I mean it though, I just like to appreciate the time we do get to spend together, even if we're just sitting together reading. It's the company that I like," he explained.

" _Mhm_. How long? Two weeks? A month? ...Two months?"

"Andie-" Carlos interrupted. 

"Two months?! Damn, boy, I would be kicking him to the curb."

"We're just busy, it's just been a crazy few months. We're both in grad school, working full time, he's got his boards to study for, and I'm formulating my dissertation hypothesis and research plan. It's just been a bit chaotic lately. It's all going to change once we get through this. Everything will be different again." There was silence for a minute as Andie selected her next words carefully. 

"Carlos-" she began, but his attention was entirely focused on the sky. 

"Andie, did you see that?" 

"Did I see what?" Andrea craned over her steering wheel to peer up at the seemingly endless stretch of stars. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary except the silvery moon seemed to be looming strangely close. She assumed it was simply a trick of the flat expanse and the lack of any comparable objects in the distance. 

"Nothing, I must just be tired." Carlos removed his wire-rimmed glasses and rubbed at his eyes. He switched on the radio and scanned until he found a clear station. Country music, of course, which was certainly not his preference, but he needed something to help him stay awake. The clock read 11:43. He couldn't help glancing frequently up at the sky where he could have sworn he just saw a flickering light.

"You can sleep if you want, we're bound to find a town along this highway somewhere. I'll wake you up if I get tired, I promise,” Andrea offered. Carlos shook his head, but did lean against the window. His eyes felt heavy. Just as his eyelids began to flutter closed, he saw the strange light again - a bright flicker followed by a streaking flash. He would have thought it was a meteor if it hadn't been so slow and low to the ground. 

"You saw that right?" Carlos asked, suddenly wired by curiosity. Andrea glanced at him sideways. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, she gazed carefully up at the sky. "There!" Carlos pointed suddenly as a bright violet light spiraled across the sky in front of the car. Andrea swore under her breath, pulling the car over roughly to the shoulder and climbing out. The light flickered momentarily, but did not disappear. Instead it continued to spiral around for a few minutes more. Carlos and Andrea spun around, transfixed by the stunning light. Just as suddenly as it appeared, it vanished, leaving no trace of its existence. They waited for a long time in the dry desert air, searching the skies for so much as a flicker, but the light didn't reappear. After a while, both scientists reluctantly climbed back into the station wagon, at a loss to explain the strange phenomenon they had just witnessed. They continued along the dark road, glancing frequently up at the stars. Eventually they passed a highway sign along the side of the road. 

"Route 800?" Andrea asked in confusion. "Where are we?" 

"Did you take any turns off the highway?" Carlos asked, turning down the radio that was quickly deteriorating into static.  

"No, not that I recall." A mile marker sign read ' _Night Vale - 22 miles, Desert Bluffs - 39 miles._ ' "I wonder if we should stop and get gas. Maybe ask for directions,” she suggested, shooting a nervous glance at the fuel meter. 

"Sounds like the setup for a horror movie. If we stop we won't survive," Carlos mumbled as he attempted again to smooth out the map he had crawled into the back seat to retrieve. After a few minutes he crumpled it and tossed it into the back again with a frustrated sigh. "Eh what the hell, better than being stranded in a desert," he finally conceded as a few distant lights flickered into focus on the horizon. As the lights grew brighter, shapes began to form in the featureless desert. A large hangar rose up on one side of the road, marking what seemed to be the edge of town. Several small businesses lined the highway, their windows dark and parking lots empty. Finally they found a Chevron station that still had an open sign flickering in the window. The stillness of the town seemed eerie, even for - Carlos checked the clock - 11:52. It seemed like much longer than nine minutes had passed since they were watching the strange light streak across the sky, but Carlos assumed it was just the tiredness of a long day on the road. "Horror movie," he whispered ominously as he and Andrea both peeked through the windshield at the dingy convenience store, large moths flittering around the ramshackle door. 

"Rock, paper, scissors," Andrea suggested, equally hesitant to leave the safety of the locked car. They faced off, Carlos choosing paper and Andrea choosing rock. They each had their own theory on why paper winning over rock was invalid and contestable, but Carlos wasn't going to fight it right now. He nestled down into the passenger seat with a grin. 

"If you die, I call your Tarantino collection," he teased. Andrea flipped him the bird before she began to pump the fuel and headed into the convenience store to ask for directions back to the highway. Carlos reached for the radio to search for a clearer station, but was pleasantly surprised to hear the static had faded and the music was playing again. It didn't sound quite so much like country anymore either, so he turned up the volume and leaned back in his seat, his eyes still wandering towards the sky. The song ended and a deep, melodic voice came over the radio, announcing the continuation of a news story about a freak accident at a shopping mall. Carlos sighed at the realization that he had only traded country music for some radio talk show. He was about to switch the station, when he heard the announcer mention something about ' _life in our little burg of Night Vale._ ' If the news was local, then possibly someone would have called in about the strange meteor-like lights in the desert only a few miles away.  He turned up the broadcast, listening carefully for several minutes as the announcer read off a list of disjointed, seemingly random words. The list ended, and the voice got excited.  

“ _Listeners, this just in! The immense surge of gravity that has surrounded the water fountain down on Stanton Street - you know, the one across from the Chevron station - has finally lifted! This will of course be a huge relief to those younger Night Vale residents who have been unable for some time to stand on their toes or even lift their heads to drink from the refreshing, cool spring of the water fountain. Now, there_ is _a bit of a downside, in that there is now no gravity whatsoever surrounding the water fountain at all, but as long as you hold on tight, getting that cool, refreshing drink should be a breeze!_ "  

It finally dawned on Carlos that the radio show was not actually news at all, but rather some sort of news parody, probably run by some college kids with a strange sense of humor and way too much time on their hands. As he leaned forward to switch off the radio, he caught another glimpse of purple flashing across the sky. He was immediately out of the car and tripping towards the middle of the empty street to get a better look away from the fluorescence of the Chevron station. There were two glowing lights now, glimmering like embers as they arced through the starry sky in a wide circle. Carlos blinked once, twice, three times, even removing his glasses and replacing them to be sure it wasn't a trick of the light. The lights continued to spiral around him as he stood mesmerized in the middle of the highway. A sudden, chilling wind passed through him moving impossibly fast and shoving him roughly down to his knees with a shiver. As he pushed himself back up to his feet, he caught a glimpse of what looked like the red glow of taillights as they vanished into the distance, not quite far enough away. His mind raced with half-formed thoughts as he tried to figure out what was happening to him. The lights were still spiraling above him, gaining momentum. Adrenaline began to course through him as a slew of alien movie sequences flashed through his mind in quick succession. It was silly to assume that lights in the sky were automatically otherworldly, he knew, but something about the night was unsettling him deeply. He glanced back at the Chevron station where the station wagon sat unchanged by the strange phenomenon in the sky and the gust of cold wind on the road. A sudden strange idea occurred to him. The radio announcer had said the water fountain was across the street from the Chevron station. Carlos scanned the dark sidewalk, punctuated only by the occasional street light. There, in one of the pools of dim light he could make out the shape of a small water fountain. He glanced both ways at the street and took a tentative step, half expecting to be knocked down again. Nothing happened, so he quickened his pace towards the sidewalk, stopping when he reached the curb. No gravity. That's what the broadcast had said. It was probably nothing, he told himself, but what if…

He reached out a hand, realizing with odd amusement that he was shaking. The tips of his fingers were just approaching the water fountain when he heard his name called from behind.  

"Carlos, what are you doing?" Andrea called as she jogged across the road. Carlos glanced up at the sky, but the purple lights were mysteriously gone again, disappearing into the dark canopy of midnight. He looked back at Andrea, who had slowed to a stop in the middle of the nearest lane of traffic. "What are you doing?" she repeated, out of breath. He was about to reply when he caught a glimpse of dim headlights flickering to life mere feet from Andrea.  

"Look out!" he yelled, reaching out to yank her out of harm's way. She tumbled to the concrete, only nearly avoiding being struck by the blur of silver that raced past. Carlos watched as the wavering taillights again disappeared far too close to be possible.  

"What the hell?" Andrea asked as she brushed flecks of rubble from her arms. "I didn't even see him, I swear," she said with a shiver.  

"I almost got hit too." Carlos offered, for the first time realizing that one of his knees was bleeding through his jeans. "They come out of nowhere and just…" he trailed off realizing just how idiotic the words sounded. "Disappear." He turned back to the drinking fountain that stood harmlessly three feet away. He was loath to approach it, equal parts afraid of something happening and nothing happening at all.  

"What are you doing?" Andrea asked again as she hugged herself tightly. She was shaking slightly too, Carlos noticed.  

"I picked up a radio transmission, they said there was something about the water fountain," Carlos explained as he took a tentative step across the sidewalk. "They said it was some sort of gravitational anomaly."  

"A water fountain?" Andrea asked in confusion, glancing nervously around at the dark street. Carlos reached out, mere inches away now. He closed his eyes and took one last step. Nothing. He felt nothing. It had been some stupid joke after all, he thought.  

"C-Carlos, what's going on?" Andrea asked in a worried voice.  He opened his eyes and looked at her, but she was his height now, not a few inches taller as she always had been. Her hand was clasped over her mouth, her eyes wide. He glanced down and realized he was drifting upwards, slowly, but steadily. The first feeling that registered was panic.  _Hold on tight_ , the voice on the radio had said. To what? He scrambled to reach hold of something until Andrea was finally able to break her trance and reach out for his hand. She tugged him sideways and he stumbled out of the strange weightless zone and back to normality. They wordlessly stared at the water fountain until Andrea finally whispered "I think I'd like to get out of here." Carlos would have liked to investigate, ask why, but something told him there wouldn't be a good answer, not immediately. Hand-in-hand they ran as fast as they could across the road and back to the warmth and safety of the little station wagon. Neither spoke until the lights of Night Vale were fading in the rear-view mirrors. Andrea let out a nervous laugh and breathed deeply. "That guy at the convenience store had spent a little too long watching the Twilight Zone. He kept asking me if I had a valid phantom traveler permit. Said this highway required one, but when I told him we were lost trying to find the interstate, he said he wouldn't turn me in for it." She looked over at Carlos for some sort of reaction, but he seemed lost in thought. "Weird town, huh?" she asked. He glanced in the rear view mirror at the last glimmer of light disappearing into the night.  

"There's something about it…" he said finally. "I'd like to come back here. Figure out what's going on. The lights and the gravity and…" a strange smile crossed his face. "I was looking for a hypothesis that hadn't been tested, my own ‘Vasquez Theory.’" Andrea eyed him quizzically. "Andie, I think I may have just discovered my dissertation topic."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I said, the first two chapters are mostly pre-NV background, and also Carlos doesn't have a canon last name, so I went with Vasquez because I think it fits pretty nicely together.  
> Thanks for reading! Comments and critique are always appreciated. :)


	2. Status Quo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All his life Carlos has wanted to be more than just good enough at something. All his life he's wanted more than status quo. Night Vale may just be the opportunity he's been waiting for all along.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Worry not, this is the last chapter before actual Night Vale stuff! Also: I should warn that there's implied domestic abuse in this chapter, just in case that's a sensitive topic for anyone reading.

It had been a long two years since Carlos had gotten lost somewhere in the desert in Arizona. Two years and countless late nights of writing and refining and theorizing until he had produced his masterpiece, his crowning achievement - his dissertation. He read the title again, syllable by syllable, the words not even sounding real after so many careful spelling checks. This was it, the final step. All that was left was to submit the dissertation to the university board. If his was the hypothesis they selected for the research opportunity, he would receive a hefty grant and finally be able to achieve his dream - he would discover the unknown, expand scientific horizons, and just maybe leave some sort of mark in history so the world would know he was here. After wavering for several minutes just staring at the email, he finally clicked send and quickly closed the laptop. He glanced over at his partner who sat beside him on the sofa sipping the last dregs from a bottle of beer. Carlos hadn't told him about the opportunity yet, nor that he had applied, too afraid that speaking the words aloud would jinx the chances of his dream becoming a reality. His heart was racing, his nerves all on edge with anticipation. There was a story unfolding on the television screen - it was movie night after all - but he felt too restless and twitchy to pay much attention. He glanced back over at Brandon, who was typing away absently at his own laptop. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he wondered if Brandon even noticed how excited he was, or even really noticed him at all. It was a silly thought - after all, the two had been a couple for six years now. This was how they spent their time together, sitting next to each other, both absorbed in their own work. It was comfortable, and it was routine. Puppy love was for teenagers. This was the steady glow of normality, Carlos reminded himself. But he still couldn't help himself from indulgently pulling his feet up and resting his head on Brandon's broad shoulder. 

"Everything okay, babe?" Brandon asked without glancing away from his computer screen. 

"Mm," Carlos replied, trying to decide if he would be more comfortable without his glasses. His attempts to re-adjust position a few times were proving futile. He peeked at Brandon's computer screen to see about 6 different internet windows open at once. It never really occurred to him to worry too much about Brandon or his activities online. It could be porn or plane tickets for all Carlos knew, but he never bothered to care, since they'd had a relatively happy, stable relationship for such a long time. Status quo was the key to contentment. It was partially why he was finding it hard to tell his partner about his decision to apply for the grant. On the slim off-chance that the board would even _read_ his paper on the anomalies he had experienced in Night Vale, and then choose to fund his expedition out of all the dozens of submissions, there was a good chance he would be leaving for a temporary assignment to a desert thousands of miles away from their Chicago apartment and the law firm where Brandon worked. It would mean a drastic shift in the status quo, and he wasn't good with shifting. Finally, he gave up trying to find a comfortable position and reached across for the empty bottle on the coffee table, planting a casual kiss on Brandon's cheek in the process. 

"I'm gonna get something to eat, you want anything?" he offered. Brandon shook his head, so Carlos escaped to the kitchen to collect his thoughts. He decided to stall by making a bowl of popcorn. As he watched the numbers count down on the microwave, he tried to think through all the possible scenarios. Maybe Brandon would be willing to take a leave of absence from the firm for a few months. He was a corporate partner after all, since his father and grandfather owned the whole company. Maybe he'd open up his own branch in Phoenix and Carlos could commute for partial weeks at a time to a research station actually in Night Vale. Or maybe…maybe Brandon would say no to the entire idea. In which case Carlos, too, would say no and thank you to the board and...and what? The microwave beeped, indicating that time was up to hypothesize imaginary outcomes. He wandered back into the living room and placed the bowl on the coffee table, plopping down onto the sofa with a little sigh. "Hey, Brandon, I was- I have something to tell you," he said in a rush, reaching for the remote and pausing whatever action movie neither one of them had actually been watching. Brandon looked at him expectantly. "It's um. It's good, don't worry." He smiled to himself a little. "Remember a few years back when I went to Arizona with Andie and we found that town?" 

"Night Vale, right?" Brandon offered, having heard the story retold in every possible form. 

"Yeah, Night Vale. I worked it into my dissertation because it fit in pretty closely with my thesis on the correlation of time and gravitational pull. I mean, I was there for one night and really only part of that night and even I felt the anomaly in both," Carlos enthused, excitement coursing through his voice. Brandon nodded. "Anyway, the university foundation is giving away a research grant. It's a really great opportunity, I mean, they'll fund a six-month hands-on expedition, and they'll provide equipment and you can even choose your accompanying team. It's really great, and I," he blushed slightly. "I submitted my dissertation." He looked up shyly, grinning ear-to-ear. 

"Babe, that's great," Brandon replied, reaching for Carlos's hand and giving it a squeeze. 

"Thanks, I mean, there's a lot of competition for it. Some people have been researching things for years, and they have solid findings and factual evidence to support their hypotheses, so they're probably not going to actually pick mine," he stuttered. "But I actually went for it, and I'm really excited at the chance that someone will at least read my dissertation and maybe care what I have to say." 

"I'm proud of you." Brandon said with a smile. Carlos beamed. He could vividly remember the last time someone had said those words to him; his grandmother had told him so on the day he had been accepted into grad school over four years ago. He was so pleased with the reaction that he impulsively leaned over and gave Brandon a peck on the lips. "But, don't be too broken up if you don't make it." Brandon added quietly. Carlos's smile faltered slightly but he shook his head as he sat back down. 

"No, I know. It's a slim shot."

"You're brilliant, you really are." Brandon quickly amended, giving Carlos's hand another squeeze. "Just, science is a tough field and sometimes brilliance isn't enough. And if it doesn't work out, and you just keep on as faculty at the university, well, you'd still be good enough for me." He leaned over and gave Carlos a kiss on the cheek before resuming his typing. Carlos forced on a smile and resumed the movie. At least it hadn't gone badly. And _good enough_ was sufficient, it was status quo. It was contentment, he told himself. Being good enough really is good enough. 

\--

It was the first day of snow in the city. Brandon wasn't much for traditions, but one of very few that they still kept was the first Snow Day. They couldn't remember the date they had actually met, only that it had been the first snowfall of the winter. Carlos, fresh out of college, had landed an internship at a research laboratory which was great, but internships don't pay bills, so he had taken a job as a barista at Starbucks to afford rent and save a little extra for the school bills now that he was just starting grad school. Brandon had walked in, tall and broad-shouldered with snowflakes buried in his tousled brown hair, and ordered whatever the barista thought was warmest with a wink. Carlos had made him a peppermint latte with extra whipped cream and on a whim signed the drink holder with his name and phone number. Brandon had taken the coffee, wandered into the corner and promptly called the number, asking when Carlos would get off work. He waited a full 40 minutes until Carlos had clocked out and then they had wandered up and down the narrow downtown avenues in the snow until they couldn't feel their toes. Brandon had invited him back to his apartment and feeling alive and strangely impulsive, Carlos had agreed. As soon as they got upstairs though, it became evident that Brandon had been in the cold a little too long as he began sneezing uncontrollably. He nearly died of embarrassment, but Carlos had just laughed, made him sit down on the sofa, and made hot cocoa and a can of chicken soup, and they had sat and watched cheesy romance movies. They fell in love quickly, and it wasn't long before they had begun to split rent on their own apartment together. Almost everything had changed in the years since, but they always called in sick the first day of snow to make chicken soup and hot cocoa and watch movies in their sweatpants. 

It was the first snowfall of the year and Carlos happily called into work with his annual bout of bronchitis. Brandon had a big meeting at the firm that morning, but promised to be home by lunch. Carlos pulled on an oversized hoodie and sweatpants and curled up on the couch in anticipation, glad they’d out ruled computers for the day this year. Minutes stretched into hours until Carlos checked his watch. 4:33. He flopped down over the armrest with an aggravated sigh. He'd given up science for this, for this one day to shirk responsibility and be blissfully happy. Somewhere amidst the disappointment, he fell asleep and only woke up to the sound of the front door opening. He sat up with a bolt, already apologizing for falling asleep, to see Brandon walking through the door with a middle-aged couple in tow. Carlos just sat there, a little stunned, his hair disheveled and his glasses cocked to one side, sweatshirt slipping off one shoulder. 

The look on Brandon's face was a mixture of shock and disappointment. "Mr. and Mrs. Cathcart, this is my-" he paused slightly "partner Carlos." Carlos forced a quick smile. He was bad at meeting new people on a good day, much less having just woken up in his sweatpants on the sofa. 

"Nice to meet you," he said, adjusting his glasses and blushing furiously. He raked a hand through his tangled dark curls, hurriedly shoving blankets into the basket next to the sofa in a fluster. Squeezing awkwardly past the couple, he leaned up to whisper in Brandon's ear "can I see you for a minute?" under the guise of a kiss. 

"Would you excuse us for a moment?" Brandon offered politely. "Please make yourselves at home." Carlos led him down the narrow hallway into the bedroom in the back of the apartment. "What in _the_ hell, Carlos?" Brandon hissed. 

"Could you have given me some warning? I dunno, maybe called or something?" Brandon ignored his questions, frowning in disapproval as he tugged at one Carlos’s off-kilter curls. 

"I thought we had decided it was about time you got a trim. And what are you even wearing?" 

Carlos looked down at his clothing, and realized with a strange emptiness that Brandon had apparently completely forgotten this year. "It’s nothing, I took a personal day," he muttered. 

"The Cathcarts are a very wealthy couple, we're trying to convince them to plan their estate with the firm, so I need you to pull yourself together and get dinner on while I sweet-talk them." Brandon turned and left the bedroom, obviously not noticing the disappointment evident on his partner's face. Carlos did his best, tossing together an assortment of things from the refrigerator and praying it turned into an actual, decent meal. His hair was still strangely unkempt from his impromptu nap, and he couldn't seem to tame it despite his best attempts. He'd slipped into the first sweater he could find, and a pair of khakis that he was fairly sure had been most recently washed. With a deep breath and a forced smile, he brought the best bottle of wine in the kitchen to the table. The crystal glasses tinkled as he carefully arranged them, trying his best to look interested as they discussed the _fascinating_ world of estate planning. 

"What do you do?" Mrs. Cathcart asked politely to Carlos as he poured her a glass of wine. 

"I'm a nuclear physics research developer at the University." The look on her face was familiar to him. It was the look he always received that let him know his job description went way over the listener's head. "I'm a scientist," he clarified. She nodded with a smile. He poured a glass for Mr. Cathcart easily, stepping around the table to stand behind Brandon. 

"Have you made any great discoveries lately?" Mr. Cathcart asked good-naturedly. Carlos always jumped at the few and far-between chances to gush about his theory on gravitational fluctuation. No sooner had he opened his mouth to respond, but Brandon reached down and squeezed his wrist with a jerk beneath the table. Carlos winced as the bottle slipped from his other hand and crashed to the floor in a puddle of deep red. Embarrassed, Carlos wrenched his arm free and hurried back to the kitchen to get a dishcloth. He could hear Brandon's booming voice in the dining room. 

"Carlos is more of a theoretical scientist. He doesn't make actual discoveries. It's all just ideas and best guesses and scribbled notes on every visible surface. You should see the office!" There was a ripple of polite laughter around the table. 

Carlos was content to hide away in the kitchen and clean up while Brandon entertained the guests after supper with some complicated joke that the scientist had never found funny. Socializing itself had never been particularly appealing to him, which was another reason why he spent much of his life burying himself in science. Equations and theories didn’t require him to find the right words without stuttering and they certainly didn’t make derisive, pointed remarks under the guise of small talk. He politely excused himself for the evening after finishing the dishes, blaming an early morning the next day even though he wasn’t needed at the university the next morning until nearly 11. He crawled into bed, and lay there for a long time staring at the faintly patterned beige wallpaper, thinking about the second law of thermodynamics. The scientific part of him interpreted it to mean that the world was slowly decaying into an increasing state of entropic disorder. The rest of him interpreted it simply as the changing of things that comes with time. Weather changed and places changed and people changed. Some days he wondered if he'd ever again see the man with the flecks of snow in his hair and the booming laugh, the one who used to hold his hand under the table at stressful family gatherings and who had encouraged him to keep going when his dissertation was rejected for the sixth time in as many months. Brandon had changed; it had been unnoticeable at first or maybe Carlos had simply refused to notice it. The change seemed obvious now as his eyes focused on the purple ring blossoming around his wrist. It wasn't the first bruise Brandon had given him, and it probably wouldn't be the last. He'd never breathe a word of it of course, not even to Andrea. In her opinion he was just a bit clumsy, clumsy enough to break a Nokia and trip over a coffee table in the dark to gain a black eye. The lab coat was helpful in hiding the rest. 

"I love him,” Carlos whispered to the empty stretch of beige that stared blankly back at him. The words were half a reminder, half to convince himself. He heard the front door close, knew Brandon would wander into the kitchen to wash the coffee mugs, knew he'd find the cup of cocoa and bowl of soup left out on the counter. Some time later the bedroom door opened quietly. He felt the mattress shift as Brandon sat down on the other side of the bed, but he closed his eyes tightly pretending to be asleep. 

"I'm so sorry." Brandon whispered, planting a kiss on the top of Carlos's head before leaving to get ready for bed. Carlos kept his eyes pressed tightly shut and forced his mind to a blank. 

\--

His hands were shaking as Carlos opened the letter. The university emblem bloomed across the top of the paper inside. Six long months had passed in anxious waiting for the letter that would decide his fate as a researcher, and here it was in his hands, smooth and plain and completely ordinary to anyone else in the world. His eyes quickly scanned the document, stopping to re-read key words in complete disbelief. Twelve months of full funding, support for a research team of 15, and the latest equipment on the market. The words he kept re-reading were the closing statement. ‘ _If results warrant, extensions in 6- 12- and 18-month segments may qualify. We look forward to working together!_ ’ Finally, finally he was going to make something of himself, maybe even change the world somehow. His hands were still shaking with excitement as he immediately began to dial Brandon's work line from memory. He stopped himself as his finger hovered over the dial button. Brandon. What in the world would he say about this? He'd be proud surely, and hopefully he had at least considered once or twice over the last six months that Carlos could possibly be chosen. Either way, news this big required a fancy dinner, some sort of celebration. It was too important for a phone call. Carlos called Andrea instead, who had been counting down days with him, marking them off on her classroom calendar with large red x's. 

"Did you open it?" were her first excited words. 

"Hello to you too," Carlos teased. 

"Shut up and tell me if you're moving to Arizona!" she retorted with a laugh. Carlos smiled and rubbed his face with his hand. 

"Well I guess, since they're funding me." Andrea squealed, her voice jumping an octave. 

" _OH MY GOD_ , did I not tell you you were brilliant?" her voice was so high pitched that he held the phone away from his ear for a moment.  "I knew they would choose you, they had to, it was the only logical choice!" she gushed. Carlos just laughed. "How do you feel?" 

"I feel relieved, that's for sure," he sighed. "Excited. I'm going to Arizona, Andie! The preparations all start as soon as I accept, and they want my answer by next Monday." She squealed again, almost more excited than he was. "If I go, you'll come with me right? I get to pick my team, and I want you to be on it." 

"I sure as hell am coming with you, and I'm just going to let you believe you had a choice in the matter." Carlos laughed. "Have you told Brandon yet?" Andrea asked after a moment. 

"Not yet. I'm not sure what he'll say." 

"Listen, Carlos." she began in her well-practiced cautionary mom-voice.  "I know you two have been together for a while, and I envy that kind of stability, I really do. But don't give up your dreams just because you're comfortable." 

"Andie, I love him," Carlos sighed, not wanting to dampen the excitement of the moment with logic. "I'm not going to actually go unless it's what we want." 

"Okay, okay," she allowed. "But just remember that there's a plural 'you' and what 'you' want, and there's a singular _you_ and what _you_ want. Just try to consider both, okay?" Carlos bit his lip and tried to push the idea from his mind. 

"Okay." 

"Call me tomorrow and let me know how things go." 

 

Carlos didn't call tomorrow, or the next day. In fact, he didn't call Andrea at all that week, because he still couldn't figure out how to broach the subject with Brandon. Time was running out to answer, so that Friday night he decided it was time to have the uncomfortable discussion. 

He carefully adjusted the silverware on the table, making sure it was perfect. It was incredibly unprofessional for Carlos to take two personal days in the same month, but he broke his rule specifically to clean up and make sure everything in the entire house was perfect, including the scallop ceviche that he had carefully prepared from scratch from his grandmother’s recipe. Brandon unlocked the door and trudged in, scraping the snow flurries from his shoes at the doormat. 

"Carlos?" he called as he set his briefcase down on the desk and hung his wool coat in the closet. 

"I'm in the kitchen!" Carlos hollered back, slipping off his oven mitts and smoothing down the front of his best green dress shirt. He wanted everything to be perfect. Brandon wandered in and sat down at the little dining room table with a heavy sigh. "Long day?" Carlos asked as he gave Brandon a quick kiss hello. 

"Long day," Brandon agreed. 

"Tell me all about it, I'm just finishing up dinner," Carlos said as he hurried back into the adjoining kitchen to pour the microwave vegetables into a glass dish. Just because he could cook a few Mexican dishes his grandmother had taught him didn't necessarily mean he was a good cook. 

"That Peterson estate case that we were handling was contested. Apparently they think the guy wrote a secret will. If you ask me the old widow has seen one too many suspense movies, but she's convinced." Brandon shook his head. "It's ridiculous either way since the guy owned a tiny house and a few acres out between a Purdue plant and a trailer park.  Not exactly a millionaire." Carlos smiled to himself. Brandon always complained about the strange people he came into contact with at work, but Carlos suspected that he secretly enjoyed the variety. He ran a hand through his perpetually messy hair, remembering that he had been meaning to get it cut for a while now, before shrugging and taking the dishes to the table. He sat down opposite Brandon, half-expecting a comment about the fact that they were actually eating dinner together and it wasn't even from a box. Brandon didn't seem to notice – not the candle in the middle of the table or the quiet music in the background – or if he did, he just didn't mention. Carlos told himself it was okay, because things like that were just what you did when you love someone. No recognition means that they already know, so in a strange way it was a mission accomplished. His stomach tightened as he stared down at his scallops. In a final attempt to stall, he took a sip of wine and coughed trying to swallow. The conversation wasn't even started yet, and he was already choking. 

He took a deep breath and sputtered "H-have you given any more thought to that research opportunity I told you about a few months ago?" Brandon's expression was hazy for a moment as he tried to recall. "The one in Night Vale." 

"A little,” Brandon replied as he took another bite. Carlos watched the flicker of the candle. 

"What have you thought about it?" he asked haltingly. Brandon shrugged. 

"I don't know, I mean, I'm glad you went for it I guess. It took courage to put yourself out there like that." 

"I mean, have you thought about what would happen if I actually got it?" Carlos asked gently. Brandon set down his fork with a sigh. 

"Carlos, look, I try to be supportive - I really do. But, I just don't think it's in the cards. Hope is great, but there's a thin line between hope and false hope." Brandon's hazel eyes locked on his. "I think holding on to this is false hope." 

"But if I did," Carlos continued, dropping his gaze back to the candle. Words were beginning to slip away from his reach. "If I had to go there for a few months to study, would you come with me?" 

"Listen," Brandon said, the frustration clipping at his words. "I love you, but, well, you're not the next Einstein. You're good at what you do, but you're not exceptional from other people who are good at what _they_ do." The words stung, and Carlos bit down on his lip sharply. "There's no shame in being average, in just being you. If you keep trying for impossible things, you're only going to fall short. It's better to settle for something you're good at than to find out you're not as special as you thought." The words were spoken with a definite finality, but Carlos pressed one last time. 

"You're not answering my question." Brandon slammed a hand down on the table, causing Carlos to flinch involuntarily. 

"You're so stupidly fixated on some pipe dream, Carlos. People respect you because you're pretty damn smart, but you need to let this Night Vale crap go. If you keep talking about glowing lights in the sky and ghost cars and zero gravity, you're gonna lose that respect and people will start to think you're crazy, and how do you think that will make me look?" Regret crossed his face the moment the words had left his mouth. 

"Do you think I'm crazy?" Carlos asked quietly, surprised by the steadiness in his own voice. 

"Carlos, babe-" Brandon tried to reach across the table for his hand, but he slid it out of the man's reach. 

"Do you think I'm crazy?" he repeated slowly. Brandon sighed.

"I think you were tired that night. I think it had been a long day and it was late, and I think you saw a meteor shower. You and Andie both admitted you were spooked and felt like it was the first scene in a horror movie, and I think you thought you saw things that weren't there." The tears were threatening the fringes of his vision again, and he pinched the bridge of his nose to force them back. 

"You said you believed in me," he whispered. 

"I do believe in you." Brandon sighed. "I just don't think you saw what you think you saw. I mean it was the middle of the desert and you may have had a few drinks, I don't know-" 

"Oh my god," Carlos laughed in frustration, pushing his chair back from the table and standing up. "I was _not_ drunk, Brandon, I've been sober for four years now." 

"Babe, I wouldn’t be mad if you were-" Brandon tried to offer, but Carlos cut him off. 

"So you're not coming with me then." Brandon looked confused for a moment, glancing down at the table and the candle and how nice Carlos looked, finally piecing it all together. His mouth hung open limply at the realization. Carlos nodded to himself before reaching for his coat, grabbing the keys, and wordlessly leaving the apartment. 

 

Andrea found Carlos sitting in his favorite place in the city, the bench at the end of the boardwalk. The snowflakes were swirling down, the cold air revealing every chilled breath, but he didn't seem to notice or care. She sat down beside him. "It went badly then?" she ventured. 

"You could say that. He thinks I made up Night Vale. He even said people will think I'm crazy for studying it." Carlos shook his head. 

"You have to admit it's hard to believe. We didn't even believe it at first," she reminded him gently, for the first time sounding genuinely upset to be right. 

"It wasn't just that. It was everything else he said. All the ' _I love you, but_ 's and the way he looks at me sometimes like he’s ashamed of me when he introduces me to people, and how all he cares about is how my choices will reflect on him. I guess I thought it was love when he would tell me I couldn't do things. I thought he was protecting me because he wanted to keep me safe," Carlos trailed off. He looked over at her, not caring if she saw how red and puffy his eyes were. "He wasn't always like this. He never used to be. We used to do spontaneous things and actually care about each other." A sad smile crept across his face as he looked back out over the layers of freezing water. "I guess nothing lasts forever. Not even love." 

"Don't say that," she comforted. "Just because Brandon is a dick doesn't mean all guys are. You just have to find the _right_ guy." 

"I don't think I believe in the right guy, Andie. Soulmates. It's just a lie we choose to believe to defend our self-esteem against all the crap we take from people who our brains recognize have genetic potential." 

"Cynic." Andie nudged him, eliciting a fraction of a smile. 

"I'm making the right choice though?" 

"Absolutely." She wrapped her arms around him they way she always used to when he was stressing over exams in college. It still made him feel better like it had then too. "The next few weeks you’ll be so busy getting everything together, it won’t really matter where you sleep at night. Besides I’ve been trying to get you to see my new place for months now.” Carlos shook his head, unconvinced. “I know it’s rough, but all the time apart will help you sort things out. A few months away will clear your mind so you can come to an informed decision on how to move forward. Plus,” she added in a singsong voice as she rocked him back and forth hypnotically. “What happens in Night Vale, stays in Night Vale." He laughed at that. 

"I think I just want to work on my research in Night Vale. I've had enough romance for a good long while. I'm actually looking forward to a break." 

\--

The next morning found him sitting at the table staring down a cup of untouched coffee. The few old suitcases stuffed with his belongings were already stacked by the door. His mind was made up; he only needed to tell Brandon. The man wandered out with a yawn, surprised to see Carlos so put-together so early. There was a bit of an uncomfortable silence, before Brandon asked, "Is breakfast ready?" 

Carlos was sure his voice was going to shake, but he steadied his resolve. "No, Brandon. I'm not making you breakfast today." He took a deep breath. "Or tomorrow. Or the day after that." Brandon eyed him warily. 

"I don't understand…" 

"I'm going to Night Vale, Brandon." His voice was firm and unwavering despite the fact his stomach felt on the brink of losing the piece of toast he’d choked down earlier. 

"Babe, I thought we talked about this," Brandon began to protest. Carlos stood up and walked deliberately over to his partner, silencing him with one last kiss. 

"I love you," he said quietly. "But I have to do this for me now. This is my shot, my chance to be more than just status quo.”

"Carlos, I'm sorry for the way things have been. We can work this out, we can talk about things, just don't-" he ran his fingers through the scientist's dark curls the way he always used to. "please don't leave me." 

"I'm not leaving you, I'm not even moving out. I'm just going to be gone for a while, long enough that we can both decide how we feel. All my stuff will still be here, so I'll have to come back either way. It's just a breather." Carlos let go, wiping at his eyes with the sleeve of his denim jacket. He pulled his pack filled with books up onto his shoulder and turned towards the door. 

"You could stay," Brandon pleaded quietly. "We're doing fine, aren't we?" 

Carlos turned back once more and smiled sadly. "I'll see you when I get back." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's really hard to go back to writing a real world setting when I've been working on the future chapters where weird and disturbing things are entirely acceptable. As a result, this is my least favorite chapter I've written so far, so I would like to reassure that from here on out it should be better. I just kind of wanted to set up the whole background for Carlos so that it can provide a point to contrast against his time in Night Vale.


	3. Love on the Airwaves

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carlos has always been good at science - equations and numbers and carefully measured reactions where he can predict the results with precision and accuracy. Romance however is a hypothesis he would rather not test here in Night Vale. The results in the past have always been inconclusive at best.

Carlos's first day in Night Vale was as much of a blur as the past month had been. Between packing and planning and staying at Andrea's and the very long drive down in his pickup, truck bed loaded with boxes of equipment and his personal belongings; sleep fell by the wayside entirely. It was only now as he leaned his head on the window in the passenger seat of Andrea's station wagon as they drove back to the lab after a late dinner at McDonald's that Carlos finally closed his eyes and drank in the fact that he was finally really _here_. All morning he and his newly assembled team of scientists had unloaded box upon box into the poorly-ventilated warehouse. He had negotiated the rent with the slightly scary Italian man who owned the pizza joint next door based on the belief that the laboratory would be fully furnished and ready for use. Apparently the concept translated loosely into there being five long metal tables, a few leaning wooden stools lining the walls, and nothing more. Thankfully the built-in apartment above had been better stocked, enough at least for his temporary purposes. After lunch he had called a press conference and given a short speech in an attempt to create some sort of rapport with the town. The townspeople and reporters in the audience had seemed strangely mistrustful and borderline catatonic at some points. After a few stumbled sentences, he had awkwardly wrapped up the brief address and been paraded through a line of people whose names he couldn't recall. At the time, he had tried to associate facts with faces to better cement them in his mind; Carlos tried to remember them again now that it had been a few hours, but he soon gave up with a yawn as they drove slowly through the quaint little darkening streets towards the lab. 

Andrea had already programmed in the radio station they had found on their first visit in the event of any further strange announcements. As they drove, they listened to the same smooth baritone reporter ramble on about helicopters. It was soothing, and he was just beginning to drift off when he suddenly heard his name spoken in dulcet tones. One eye opened curiously. Andrea spun the volume knob up a few bars. The voice paraphrased his press conference speech, making it sound much smoother and less awkward than it had really been. The announcer then began to describe Carlos in strange reverence before quite matter-of-factly stating:

" _He grinned, and everything about him was perfect, and I fell in love instantly._ " 

Both eyes shot open then as Carlos sat up straight. He tried to match a name to the voice, suddenly aware he had heard it already today. Cecil - the name clicked into place. The last name was still a little unclear, but Carlos had taken note of the name Cecil and that voice. Carlos tried to think back to what he had even said to the man beyond ' _Hello, it's nice to meet you._ ' Hardly a basis for love. Hardly a basis for anything. The thought occurred to him that maybe the man was being facetious, for some reason offended by his presence in the city. As he reached over and switched off the radio, he made a mental note to avoid Cecil either way. Andrea glanced at him, a mischievous smile on her face. The car turned unexpectedly at the next corner. 

"Where are we going?" Carlos asked hesitantly, already knowing the answer. 

"To meet your new boyfriend," Andrea replied smugly. "What did I tell you before we left? What happens in Night Vale-"

"-stays in Night Vale," Carlos finished with a groan. "Andie, turn around. I'm not going to go to that radio station." He slumped in the passenger seat, crossing his arms dejectedly.

"Oh come on, just go meet the guy at least. Just go say hi. Just one little word." Andrea slowed as they reached the parking lot of the Night Vale Community Radio station. She had been in town a few days before Carlos had arrived and apparently knew enough side streets to already be taking short cuts. 

"I already met him today at the press conference," Carlos muttered, sinking lower in his seat as they parked. 

"Then you know what they say. Two conversations is grounds for a Facebook request," Andrea said in the same singsong voice she always teased him with. She reached into the back seat and retrieved a handheld Geiger counter. "Just pretend you're researching something." Carlos shook his head stubbornly. 

"I'm not going into that station." 

"Okay. I'll rock, paper, scissors you for it," Andrea suggested. "Loser has to go poke around the station." Carlos eyed her suspiciously, sizing up the competition before agreeing. He decided at the last second on scissors, assuming she would go for the eternally debatable paper. Instead she pulled rock. He slumped back into the seat. "You can't even contest that win - rock beats the crap out of scissors every time," she said with a sly giggle. Her smile faded as she watched him for a moment. "If you really want me to take you home, I will." 

"A deal is a deal," Carlos sighed, still unmoving. 

"Come on, live a little," she said, nudging his shoulder and tossing him the Geiger counter. 

He wandered into the radio station, not exactly sure what to expect. Through the glassed-in entrance, there was a broad hallway lined on both sides with office doors. At the end of the hall he could see a bank of cubicles glowing with the ethereal light of computer screensavers. In either direction there were slightly narrower halls that turned sharp corners. The lights were dim, almost too dim for him to actually see anything, and the whole building felt eerily abandoned. He stood awkwardly in the doorway for several minutes trying to decide on a direction. Just as he was about to give up and return to the car, a face appeared at the end of the hallway to the left. It was a young woman, Carlos estimated in her early 20s, with bouncing blond curls and a bright, cheery grin. 

"Can I help you?" she bubbled as she approached, clipboard in hand. 

"Um. I'm just testing for…materials." Carlos stumbled, holding up the device in his hand. On-the-spot excuses had never been his strong point. Recognition suddenly dawned on her face. 

"You're Carlos, you're that new scientist everybody's talking about!" She held out a hand. "I'm Meg. I'm kind of the station intern," she said with a proud little shrug as he shook her hand. "It's only my second day, but so far it's been the most exciting two days of my life!" Carlos tried to think of an appropriate response, but ended up just smiling. "Right, right," Meg the Intern shook her head quickly. "Have you tested the recording booth yet?" 

"Not yet-" Carlos began, hoping to explain that he didn't really need to, but she spun around quickly. 

"Great! It's right this way, just follow me." Carlos did as instructed, following her down a dark, shadowy hallway lined with utility closets and a break room. Several of the doors had large red x's painted across them, but Carlos didn't figure Meg would know why if it was only her second day. The hallway ended at a door that stood ajar. The small room beyond was filled with computer screens, metal shelves loaded with thick binders, and scraps of paper tacked to pinboards and littering the floor. One wall was almost entirely taken up by a large tinted window and another narrow door. Peeking through the window, he could just make out a desk covered in small glowing lights and a shadowy figure seated at it. "You can go on in," Meg nodded towards the door. Carlos shook his head vehemently. "Oh, don't worry, we just cut to the weather segment. It'll be a few minutes before we're live on air again," she reassured as she opened the door and practically shoved him through, closing it behind him. He stumbled awkwardly, regaining his balance. The figure at the desk glanced up from a messy stack of papers at the commotion. Recognition suddenly clicked in Carlos's mind as he again matched the name with the voice and now the owner’s pale angular face. He remembered Cecil now, all spindly limbs and horn rimmed glasses and platinum blond hair so perfectly coifed it looked to be a single solid object. He also remembered that he had indeed said nothing but ' _Hello, it's nice to meet you,_ ' in their brief exchange. Cecil slipped off the studio headphones that he had been wearing, allowing them to hang comfortably around his neck before he ran a hand along the solid wave of his hair. 

"Hello again!" the radio host offered with a smile. His voice was smooth and rich, and seemed to fill the air just as much off the radio as it did during the broadcast. Carlos again wasn't sure how to respond, so he just offered a nod and a tight-lipped smile. Cecil blinked and dropped his gaze back down to his papers, a twitchy smile flickering on and off across his face until he covered his mouth with his hand. Carlos realized with a sudden flush that he was staring. Chiding himself for his lack of manners, he quickly reached into his pocket and pulled out the Geiger counter, running it along a wall. "Already doing science then?" Cecil asked as he leaned in his chair to watch. Carlos stuttered. 

"I'm um. Yes. Testing. We're testing for materials." He was grateful to be facing the wall and not the strange radio announcer. It was rapidly becoming apparent that the man hadn't been facetious in his commentary on Carlos. Even worse, Cecil seemed to truly be twitterpated. Carlos shook his head and moved along to the next wall, the one directly behind the chair in which Cecil sat. He reached the device as far up as he could along the wall, which was an embarrassingly short distance, but nothing happened. Of course nothing would happen. This was a radio station not a nuclear weapons base. His mind was already formulating an excuse and a quick escape when suddenly the Geiger counter began to beep. He froze and tried to repeat the motion. Silence, then a single beep. Reaching back to the wall with an actual purpose this time, he began to feel along it slowly, waiting for another sound. It was hard to shake the impression that Cecil was watching him. 

"You gave quite the speech today. It was so…" Cecil breathed deeply. "Inspiring," he exhaled. Carlos glanced back at Cecil, flashing another tight smile before resuming his work. He really wasn't trying to be rude, but something about being alone with Cecil was unsettling and left him feeling strangely exposed. He instinctively tugged at the collar of his lab coat before continuing his investigation. "I'm very glad you're here you know," Cecil said easily after a pause. Carlos swallowed as he slid the device along the baseboard. He tried to decide if he should mention that he had heard the first half of the broadcast or not. Eventually he concluded that pretending he hadn't heard Cecil’s declaration of love was probably the better option. 

"Oh?" the scientist squeaked. The device refused to read again, so he tried the next wall, which had a small window to the outside built in. Carlos paused to look out at the barren desert that unfolded like a blank canvas as far as he could see. The moonlight streaming in seemed to be the only major source of light in the whole booth. 

"Mhm.  Just last week I said to myself, I said, 'Cecil, you know what Night Vale needs is a bit more science.' And then this morning I woke up and there you were moving all those fascinating boxes and machines into the lab next to Big Rico's." Carlos was admittedly only paying half of his attention to what Cecil was even saying. The man's voice was just so soothing, and the counter had begun beeping a little more frequently on this wall. He still couldn't seem to find a pattern in the frequency. The levels seemed irregular and…moving somehow.  "Lots of people around town are worried you're going to change everything," Cecil continued. Carlos sighed and smacked the device against his palm. The readings were seemingly random. 

"I'll try not to," he mumbled distractedly as he checked the settings on the reader.

"Oh, on the contrary, Carlos," the scientist froze when Cecil said his name. There was something about the way the sounds rolled off his tongue as if they were complex, the way he carefully constructed all two syllables as if he was afraid of one of them getting lost along the way. "Everything is going to change. I can feel it." Carlos was still for a long moment before he shook off the comment and continued along the last long wall. It was the wall directly across from Cecil's desk, and now he could definitely feel eyes watching him closely. The Geiger counter made no sound as he slid it gingerly against the wall. With a sigh, he took a step back. Suddenly the device began beeping shrilly. A tentative step forward silenced the device and confirmed his suspicions. Carlos shut his eyes tightly. The closer to Cecil's desk, the more the device bleated. He fought with himself for a moment. Curiosity eventually won out over discomfort, and he spun around. 

"Can I scan your desk?" he blurted quickly. Cecil's smile brightened and he nodded enthusiastically. Carlos cautiously approached the metal desk, careful to touch neither the equipment nor the man sitting uncomfortably close. The detector began to chirp feverishly as he slid it along the smooth metal. With a dry swallow, the realization began to sink in.   Carlos shot a nervous glance at Cecil. The man seemed completely unfazed as he sat motionless, the pale moonlight casting shadows across his luminous smile. 

"You know, the weather segment is going to end any minute now. Would you mind staying for an impromptu interview? I'm sure if you said a few words on air, oh Night Vale would be just as enchanted with you as, well…" he trailed off unexpectedly, his strange-colored eyes suddenly glued to the half-empty coffee mug staining a perfect chestnut ring in his stack of papers. The chirping grew in intensity, the dial spinning faster as Carlos held the counter close to Cecil's microphone. He shook his head quickly, taking a frightened step back. Cecil's expression grew concerned, then apologetic. "I'm sorry, I just thought-"

"You need to leave immediately," Carlos interjected suddenly. This much radiation was unsafe - unheard of, even. He pressed himself against the wall, feeling his way to the door in the strange semi-darkness. "You need to evacuate the building as quickly as possible." Cecil shook his head with a puzzled smile. 

"I'm in the middle of a broadcast, I can't just leave." Carlos just stared at him for a moment more before he finally found the doorknob. 

"Evacuate as quickly as possible," he repeated, opening the door and slipping through it. He stumbled down the dark hallways, peeking in the few open doors to see if he could warn Meg the Intern on his way out. The halls were still strangely deserted, though a thick smoke seemed to be…oozing from the main hallway. As he hurried toward the glass doors, he did a quick check on his vitals. His pulse was racing, but it could have been the running or the entire encounter with Cecil. Too many variables for a conclusive result. He felt a little dizzy, but he had been able to find his way to the doors, so he wasn't disoriented or noticeably confused. There was no detectable nausea, no sudden exhaustion, no blood dripping from any orifices. As far as he could tell, he hadn't just absorbed the 27 gray of radiation his Geiger counter had indicated. He quickly threw open the station wagon door and slid inside, sinking into the passenger seat in a relative daze. Andrea asked several times before he finally heard the question. 

"Carlos, are you alright?" He managed a slight nod. "What happened in there?" She was worried, he could tell by her pursed lips and furrowed brow. Her brown eyes suddenly widened. "He didn't try to hurt you or anything, did he?" She was unbuckling her seat belt, presumably prepared to retrieve the crow bar in the trunk as a weapon. 

"No, god no," he finally sputtered once he caught his breath. "He's a little weird and slightly creepy, but I think he actually meant those things he said about me." He rubbed at his bleary eyes beneath his glasses as she started the old car and backed out of the parking lot. "I was pretending to be busy in the studio, and the counter picked up a reading that was absolutely off the charts. It was coming from Cecil's mic. It doesn't make sense how anyone could sit near it and not be immediately affected." He shook his head and peeked up out of habit at the dark, starry sky. 

"Were you affected?" Andrea asked, removing a hand from the wheel to turn Carlos to face her. She took her eyes momentarily off the road to methodically look him over - checking his pupil size, reaching for his wrist to count out his heart rate. 

"Not that I can tell," he sighed. "I feel fine for now anyway." 

"Set an alarm for two hours and check again. Sometimes symptoms take a while to surface," she advised. It wasn't like he needed advice when it came to radiation; he was a physicist after all. But unwarranted advice and frequent vital checks and strangely cold, observant reactions came with the territory of being a scientist and nearly all your friends also being scientists. "I know you may be dying, and I don't mean to be abrupt," she added. "But don't you think it's a little exciting that you've only been here one day and already you've found enough radiation to potentially wipe out a small village?" She sighed contentedly as the vehicle pulled to a stop in front of the lonely streetlamp that cast a dismal glow against the corrugated metal of his new home. "Things are going to change, Carlos. There's something in the air, can't you feel it?" Carlos eyed her curiously as he climbed out of the car. People seemed to be saying that to him a lot lately. As he fumbled with the unfamiliar keys in the eerie maroon glow of the streetlamp, all he felt was the strange and unnerving sensation that he was being watched. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel like Carlos's first visit to the station the day he gets to town is vastly overlooked. I mean, it is the first time we know of that he actually met Cecil, right? Also RIP Intern Meg whose corporeal form was absorbed by an unknown entity in the atrium.


	4. Sleepy Desert Town

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They always say the first month is the hardest.

From the outside, Night Vale seemed like just another small town in the deserts of Arizona.  The streets were swept with sand, the mom-and-pop businesses dated, the community close-tied.  Beneath the surface however, things were very far from normal, and it didn’t take long for Carlos to come to three very basic realizations about the sleepy desert town he had naively relocated to. 

The first realization was that he had severely underestimated the town’s scientific incongruity.  He had been so proud of himself for his dissertation theory on gravitational and temporal shifts from his one night stand with the lights in the sky.  Within twenty-four hours of arriving in town, it had become painfully apparent that he had only glimpsed a fraction of the anomalies in Night Vale. There were massive earthquakes that nobody could feel, houses that didn’t really exist, portals through time itself, and a cloud that glowed and shifted against the wind leaving animal carcasses in its wake.  At first Carlos had been slightly disturbed by the town’s seemingly senseless abandonment of the laws of physics.  Uncertainty quickly gave way to curiosity however, and one by one the machines they had set up in the laboratory hummed to life with experiments and carefully planned tests.  Night Vale was home to a seemingly endless armada of mysteries, but Carlos was determined that with careful observation and experimentation science would prevail as science always did.  He was sure he could force even the strange little town in the desert into his organized lists of numbers and equations and diagrams.  It just might take an extension or two on the grant. 

As the months wore on, the nights grew longer and the conclusions less and less logical.  The first day of October was the day simple arithmetic ceased to properly function.  It was also the first day that Carlos genuinely doubted his work.  Science had always been the constant in his life.  It had been the one part of his world that never changed, never shifted, never collapsed.  Science was the one thing he was confident that he could understand.  The first day of October was the first day that Carlos was afraid of Night Vale.

-

The second truth he realized was that the feeling he was being watched wasn’t necessarily simply a feeling.  When the first note was slipped under the door informing him his behavior was being observed, he didn’t take it seriously.  Cecil had mentioned in their first brief encounter that the locals were distrustful of change, so Carlos thought nothing of what he assumed was an anonymous prank and tossed the note and the next few that followed into the bin beside his desk.  Concern didn’t set in until the letters began to slide under the door regularly, one-by-one every night.  Some of them were fairly harmless, simply informing him that his socks didn’t match or requesting that he turn up the music when he was in the shower.  Progressively they grew more threatening.  

The first time Carlos was arrested by the Sheriff’s Secret Police was for a misdemeanor.  It was nearly midnight on a Saturday night when he was forcibly removed from his apartment and taken into custody for failing to fulfill his mandatory weekly pizza requirement at Big Rico’s next door.  It took some coaxing to assure the Secret Police that it was an honest mistake.  Since it was only his third week in town, they were willing to let him off with a warning and a literal slap on the wrist instead of the standard punishment of three months’ incarceration at the abandoned mine shaft.  The second time Carlos was arrested was on the more serious charge of possession, for which the retribution was the loss of one extremity.  He had tried his best to be careful, but when the police unexpectedly invaded the laboratory during work hours for a raid and found the writing utensils he hadn’t known were illegal, they took him into custody yet again.  This time he had no excuses to avoid the punishment, though they had assured him he would be able to choose the extremity.  As they drove into the desert towards an unknown location in an unmarked white van, a terrifying distancing calm had settled over Carlos who sat staring at his hands from different angles to determine which one he liked less.  That was before the van halted abruptly, the door opened, and he was released from his brief confinement.  The officer apologized profusely, stating that an anonymous benefactor had vouched for the scientist’s innocence and paid the levies to clear the arrest from his record.  Which is what brought Carlos to the third realization.

-

Cecil was watching him almost as closely as the Secret Police were.  As he had with Night Vale itself, Carlos had severely underestimated the radio host.  What he assumed would simply be just another fleeting fancy had escalated to a slight stalker-like fascination that now bore all the signs of full-on infatuation.  Whatever his personal opinions on Cecil’s feelings, Carlos had to admit that it was comforting to know that even in the bizarre, unfamiliar desert, someone was looking out for him.  However it still left him with an entirely new set of problems.

Namely, Carlos was vastly unprepared to deal with Cecil’s adoration.  He never knew how to react when Cecil would approach him guardedly in public asking ridiculously basic science questions, or when he would babble on the radio show and tell the whole town about Carlos’s haircuts.  He especially didn’t know how to react when he woke up one morning to little red dots covering all of his outdoor belongings: one on the new car he had bought when his pickup had mysteriously combusted, one on the streetlight that glowed maroon through the night, one on the recycle bin that frequently made gulping sounds, a little organized row of dots along the corrugated metal panels of the siding, and one last dot on the front door attached to a note.  It had a phone number, Cecil’s name, and the words ‘ _call anytime_ ’ followed by what was either a very large period or a very small heart - all, curiously, written carefully in blue ink.  Carlos did what he could to keep the situation at bay.  He always kept their conversations to an absolute minimum of words, and was sure to never be the one to initiate contact.  He never acknowledged the fact that he heard the things Cecil said about him when he listened to the radio show late at night in the empty lab.  And he never called.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was originally attached to the next one, but as I was touching it up, I realized it seemed to flow better as its own little interlude. And also I really wanted to mention Dot Day because I firmly believe that Cecil used almost all his red dots on poor, unsuspecting Carlos and his entire sheet of blue dots on Steve Carlsberg.  
> Thanks to everyone reading this and to those who have left comments! You people are eternally cool.


	5. Street Cleaning Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For the first few weeks, Carlos thought it was exaggeration or simple eccentricity that prompted all the townsfolk to live in perpetual fear. After months of adjusting, he’s come to  realize that the best course of action is in fact to turn on the radio and hide.

Several months into his stay in Night Vale, Carlos had begun to leave the radio on as background noise in the laboratory during the day. NVCR had mostly static, but every once in a while there would be a citywide announcement or even one of Cecil’s weekly afternoon shows. While Cecil had an evening show on a regular 3-nights-a-week schedule, his afternoon specials would be scattered at random onto one day per week and usually focused more singularly on current events. It was one such afternoon, and Carlos was taking a peek through Andrea’s microscope at a bacterial sample she had carefully preserved from the dead armadillos that had rained from the Glow Cloud. There was a strange quiet in the lab that had been steadily growing louder every day. Carlos knew why and refused to acknowledge the apathetic expressions on his team’s faces and their lack of interest in the running studies. He also refused to acknowledge the empty chair where Jake had sat the previous week. Showing up late was becoming routine with the team, but now one of them had decided to not show up at all. 

“ _Please remain calm_ ,” Cecil’s flowing voice commanded through the radio on Carlos’s desk. The scientist looked up from the microscope to listen to the announcement. Cecil was rambling on about street cleaning in a voice that sounded legitimately afraid. “ _Street Cleaners focus on heat and movement, and so the best strategy is to be dead already._ ” Carlos glanced around at the long rows of safety glasses looking up at him expectantly. He had personally selected all fifteen scientists on his team from the brightest and best he had known in grad school, and a few specialists that had come highly recommended by the National Science Institute. In the seven months that had passed since they had arrived in Night Vale, the team had become a dysfunctional family of sorts. After their first miserable week during which the confusing and potentially dangerous nature of their new job had become fully apparent, Carlos had offered anyone who wanted to return home the opportunity to leave without any judgment or mark on their résumés. To each scientist’s credit, not a single one accepted the offer. Since then they had learned to look out for each other in the strange nonsensical town, while doing what research they could under Carlos’s careful guidance. He led the team to the best of his ability, and to his pride, he hadn’t lost a single scientist yet which seemed impressive given the town’s outrageously high death rate. He wasn’t about to let whatever cleaned the streets of Night Vale tarnish his record. 

“Arnst, try to get ahold of Jake. Make sure he’s just at home.” Carlos commanded. Arnst, a slightly balding chemist in his early forties nodded and pulled out his cell phone. Carlos counted heads like a middle school teacher on a field trip, coming up one short. Bethenny, a brilliant geologist and one of the youngest on the team, still hadn’t returned from gathering rock samples out at the abandoned missile silo. “Can someone get in touch with Bethenny?” Carlos asked. Linda, another physicist with rapidly graying hair and a timid demeanor, raised her hand. “Call her, tell her to find whatever shelter she can.” 

“Jake says he’s in the basement of Jerry’s Tacos playing a high stakes game of poker with the black angel and the city clerk,” Arnst announced as he clicked shut his phone. “Says they’re only playing for eternal damnation, and that we shouldn’t worry for him.” Carlos gave a quick nod of acknowledgment, not stopping to care about how ridiculously normal the explanation seemed by now. He still had one ear tuned to Cecil’s scattered broadcast; the host was mentioning off-handedly that even the City Council had evacuated. If City Council had evacuated, Carlos decided it was time he and his team did the same. 

“Alright, everybody please take careful note of where you are in your projects. Shut off any hood fans and heat lamps, place your writing utensils in the locker, and make your way to quarantine room G in an orderly fashion,” Carlos ordered calmly. The lab became a buzz of activity as burners were switched off, notebooks flipped closed, and the few sticks of blackened charcoal that he had spent an entire weekend sharpening to use in place of pencils were carefully stashed in the locker cabinet he’d installed along the wall as a result of the municipal raid. Linda still hadn’t seemed to get ahold of Bethenny out at the missile silo. Carlos held up the end of the line as they proceeded single file into the narrow sloping hallway that led to a labyrinth of subterranean quarantine rooms. He and his scientists used the winding tunnels of windowless rooms for storage and lockup and as temporary shelter during Night Vale’s frequent and unpredictable bouts of inclement weather. They collectively agreed to not discuss what the rooms may have been used for by the previous tenants. Another careful headcount confirmed that all thirteen of his teammates were present before he shut off the lab’s main breaker. The lights went out momentarily before backup lights installed in the quarantine hall flickered on. Carlos closed the sealed door to the hallway and entered the pass code lock. All his life he’d been told he erred on the side of caution, but here in Night Vale he was positive his caution was the only reason he was still even alive. The scientists huddled into a mess of lab coats in the hallway as if suddenly forgetting where to go. “Room G,” Carlos reminded them. The group filed into the room, but Carlos didn’t close the door just yet. The dank quarantine rooms had no source of light, and he was unwilling to cut off the dim glow from the hallway until absolutely necessary. Bethenny’s name flashed across the screen as his phone rang. 

“Bethenny, are you safe?” Carlos asked immediately. 

“I’m in the old hangar by missile silo,” Bethenny whispered urgently. “I was outside and I heard them coming, and I hid in here. But, Carlos, there’s no door. They’re right outside and there’s nothing stopping them from coming in.” She inhaled a squeaky gasp, attempting to muffle the sound with her hand. 

“Bethenny, I need you to try to slow your pulse. Whatever they are, they can sense any excess heat. Focus on breathing slowly.” Carlos kept his voice low and steady, knowing the last thing she needed to hear was the panic that had settled in his stomach creep into his voice as well. 

“Carlos, I’m scared,” she whispered shakily. Carlos buried his face briefly in one of his hands. He should have never sent her out alone. He should have known better. This was Night Vale after all, and people who went places alone rarely ever came back. 

“It’s going to be okay,” he lied, because he never knew if anything here was ever actually okay anymore, but saying any differently would be neither helpful, nor wise at the moment. “I’m so sorry. Focus on breathing, they’ll be gone soon.” 

“Alright,” Bethenny replied, her voice hoarse and trembling. There was a sharp intake of breath, a faint squeal, and a sound Carlos couldn’t place before the line went silent. He called her name several times before his phone dropped the call. Thirteen pairs of eyes peered at him expectantly from the dark quarantine room. A loud wailing noise echoed down from somewhere up above. The street cleaners were here. 

Carlos swung the heavy metal door shut, plunging the room into total darkness, and slumped down against it in resignation. The small quarters were filled with the sound of rapid breathing and the flicker of pale blueish light as faces were half-lit by cell phone screens. Carlos guessed everyone was attempting to text loved ones as they so frequently had cause to do in Night Vale. It was a useless gesture since he had quickly come to the realization that messages sent outside the desert rarely, if ever, actually went through. Contact with the outside world was impossible as far as he could tell. During the first few months of his residence in town, before he gave up trying to keep in touch with his family, he had received a few responses, but they had been nothing but garbled strings of letters that made no sense. One had even been in a mixture of Egyptian hieroglyphics and ancient cuneiform. He guessed it probably had something to do with the email being from an international sender. Of course, Carlos said nothing to discourage his scientists from trying. False hope was still hope after all. Anyway, they had probably figured it out for themselves by now. They may have one-by-one gradually begun to give up on the value of science and the existence of knowable facts since arriving in Night Vale, but none of them were stupid. 

His own phone vibrated in his pocket. He slipped it out and switched on the display to see a text message from Cecil. While it was true that he had kept the note with Cecil’s number, he had still never actually used it. He didn’t exactly want to encourage the strange man whose inexplicable adoration for him seemed to dance along - and sometimes leap brazenly across - the line between flatteringly ardent and alarmingly creepy. The scientist didn’t even really want to know how Cecil had gotten his number. The text simply read ‘ _If you aren’t already dead, then I hope you’re somewhere safe._ ’ Carlos stared at the screen until he caught Andrea watching him. Flustered, he switched it off quickly and tucked it back in his pocket. 

“At least you have someone who cares,” she said quietly as she slid down to sit next to Carlos. “I could die down here, and not a single person outside this room would care, or even probably know.” There wasn’t any self-pity in her tone. Andrea had never been much for false modesty or self-pity, just pure honesty. 

“I’d care,” Carlos offered, nudging her shoulder. 

“You’re in this room,” she replied, her wry smile faintly visible through the dark. Their conversation was cut short by a horrible, ear-splitting screech from above. It sounded like long claws dragging across the corrugated metal siding of the laboratory’s exterior. Carlos realized with a slight shudder that that was probably exactly what it was – some hideously distorted creature with long, twisted talons that for some insane reason kept the streets of Night Vale clean. Andrea switched on the small portable radio that she had thought to snatch from Carlos’s desk in their hasty evacuation. Setting the volume low, she set it on the floor between them so they could hear the updates on the situation outside. Apparently even the radio station had moved its broadcast team to a remote bunker judging by the muffled quality of Cecil’s voice and the fact that he announced he was now in a bunker. Carlos didn’t feel quite so unjustified; hiding in an underground holding cell didn’t seem like an overreaction anymore if Night Vale natives were doing it as well. Somewhere in the distance a siren wailed faintly, but the horrible screeching sound had gradually passed. The group sat quietly, listening to the weather, which that particular day seemed strangely fitting since it seemed to be about people being trapped and killed. Or maybe it was metaphorically singing about love. Carlos couldn’t tell. The weather always gave him an odd feeling; some days it seemed random and unpredictable, but other days it felt eerily directed towards him. He always shook it off with a reminder that he should quit listening to Cecil’s evening broadcasts when he worked late in the lab after everyone else went home. Soon enough the weather ended and Cecil’s voice returned, sounding noticeably shaken, but warm and resonant as always. The radio host was announcing that the danger had passed, that it was all over. Carlos switched off the radio, not wanting to hear the rest of Cecil’s celebratory soliloquy on how they all survived. Carlos didn’t want to hear it when they hadn’t survived, not all of them. 

“Linda, try to get ahold of Bethenny again,” Carlos said as he pushed himself to his feet. “Andrea,” he always used her full name when addressing her in front of the other scientists, “keep everyone in here until I can confirm that the coast is clear.” She grabbed his shoulder as he swung the door open and stepped out into the disorienting dim glow of the hall. 

“Carlos,” Andrea’s voice was all seriousness, which was a notable change from her usual sarcastic drawl. “I meant what I said about Cecil.” Carlos glanced past her, afraid the others would overhear their conversation. They all seemed too absorbed in hugging each other in relief and sending more useless, but probably cathartic, texts to assure loved ones that they were once again safe. “I know he’s a little persistent and slightly infatuated, but he seems to genuinely care about you. Don’t take that kind of concern for granted.” She let go of his lab coat as he nodded. Carlos wandered out to the street, looking for any signs of change. There were no claw marks on the outside of the warehouse or pools of blood or anything at all to signify that something horrifying had passed only brief minutes ago. The street looked, in fact, very clean. Not entirely sure why, he found himself walking in the direction of Mission Grove. When he arrived at the corner of the park, he was met with a scene exactly as Cecil had described on the radio. A group of townspeople, a few hooded figures, and what appeared to be one of the Sheriff’s Secret Police judging by the throwing stars strapped to his back and the cape and the leopard-camo jeggings, stood huddled in the center of the park staring up at the sky. On the fringe of the gathering was Cecil himself, white-blond hair sticking out at disheveled angles, the back of his vest and shirt rumpled and partially untucked from his cuffed jeans. The radio bunker must have been more of a crowded crawlspace. As if feeling the scientist’s eyes on him, Cecil spun around suddenly. Relief washed over his angular features as he took several measured steps in Carlos’s direction. 

“You’re alright,” he breathed as he looked Carlos over quickly. “I was worried, I didn’t know if you would hear the announcement. Not everybody listens to public radio you see,” Cecil explained as he tucked his arms in close to himself. Carlos was always surprised at how normal Cecil sounded in person. His voice was still deep and mesmerizing, but it lacked the tone of grandiloquence. The scientist simply nodded in reply, not sure why exactly he had come to the park. 

“I lost someone,” he admitted after a long silence. The words shook him even as he spoke them. _This_ was why he had come, he realized. He wanted to tell Cecil. He didn’t want the radio host’s comfort or pity, he just wanted him to know. “Her name was Bethenny. She applied to come to Night Vale with me as a part of her preliminary dissertation research. She wasn’t even two years out of college.” The words rushed unbidden. “I sent her out to the missile silo by herself to collect some rock samples. She was so scared when she called me.” His breath gave out at the end of the sentence, and he dropped his gaze to a persistent patch of grass that had forced its way between two squares of the sidewalk beneath his worn-out shoes. 

“It’s not your fault,” Cecil said quietly. Carlos looked up to see the softened expression on the man’s face. “People are lost here every day. This town takes more of us than we like to recognize.” It was strange to hear the honesty in Cecil’s voice. Usually he brushed off the wanton death and destruction as just another morbidly interesting story to tell to the fearful masses huddled around their radio sets. Carlos didn’t know exactly how to proceed, so he let the silence hang between them until he could formulate the fragile question he didn’t really want to hear the answer to. 

“What will I find out at the missile silo?” he asked warily. Cecil was thoughtful for a moment before dropping his gaze and pushing the frames of his glasses up on his nose with a sigh. 

“It will be very clean,” he replied finally. The answer shouldn’t have surprised Carlos, nor should it have seemed so much more devastating than he was expecting. But it did. He shuddered slightly. Cecil continued to stare at the ground for a moment more, his strangely pale eyes glazed over and his mouth moving ever so slightly and incredibly quickly as if he were silently reciting a list to himself. Carlos was about to ask if the man was alright when his gaze flickered back up to look curiously into the scientist’s face. The ghost of a smile played at Cecil’s lips as he reached out and rested his palm lightly on the sleeve of Carlos’s lab coat. Carlos looked down in surprise at the unbidden touch, shocked by the strange cooling sensation he felt even through his lab coat that seemed to emanate from Cecil’s skin. “Just because you lose something doesn’t mean you’ll never find it again,” he said quickly, offering a half smile. Carlos stared blankly at him, sure now more than ever that Cecil was definitely not quite normal. The man removed his hand, but the strange tingling sensation remained a few moments more. Carlos took a leery step back, mumbling something about needing to give the all clear to his team. As he turned to leave, Cecil said something so softly he almost missed it entirely. “I’m glad you’re alive, Carlos. This world would be quite miserable without you.” He was used to having Cecil gush like a schoolgirl about him on the radio, but he was again struck by the sudden vulnerability in the man’s voice. 

There was an empty silence as the scientists filed out of the quarantine room and back into the lab. As Carlos had feared, they had been entirely unable to reach Bethenny. He let everyone go home early, not even bothering to restore power to the lab. Andrea gave him a tight hug before promising to accompany him to the missile silo first thing in the morning. Carlos simply nodded numbly and locked up the door, switched off the radio - which had been playing a single sustained note for the past hour - and climbed the metal spiral staircase that led to his small upstairs apartment. 

It came as no surprise to him the next morning that Linda, Joshua, and Randall didn’t show up for work. After the previous day's ordeal, it seemed that the town had finally begun to take its toll on the team. They each had left him a carefully worded, falsely-cheerful message on his phone informing him that they just didn’t see the point in trying to unravel root causes or decipher molecular structures when Night Vale just never made any sense. As Carlos swallowed four ibuprofen tablets with the dregs of his second cup of coffee, a steady knock came at the small front door of the laboratory. He opened the door to find Old Woman Josie beaming up at him, all wrinkles and cloying floral perfume. “Can I help you?” he offered cordially. Of all the strange people in Night Vale, Josie was one of his favorites, probably because she reminded him so much of his own grandmother back home. 

“I believe you lost something,” she replied, jerking her head to the side. Carlos leaned out of the doorframe to take a peek. Bethenny, her coat pristine, her dark hair in a tight bun, took a careful step forward. Without thinking, Carlos pulled her into a hug. 

“We thought we lost you,” Carlos said as he pulled away and looked carefully into her eyes. No pupil dilation, no obvious trauma. He reached for her wrist, counting out a steady pulse. The routine was not strictly an affirmation of life - though affirmations of life _were_ a precious thing in a place like Night Vale.  It was more the scientists’ strange way of connecting, of assuring themselves and each other that even in the dangerously twisted little town everything was, for the time being, okay. 

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Bethenny laughed brightly.  “I was out at the missile silo one minute, the next I was at Josie’s house eating split pea soup and watching reruns of Bonanza,” she explained. 

“Erika found her all alone out there,” Josie added with a disapproving look at Carlos. “You should know better than sending a pretty young thing like her out by herself.” 

“Josie,” Bethenny chided. 

“She’s right, I shouldn’t have let you go out there alone.” Carlos gave her one more quick hug. “I’m so glad you’re okay.” He sighed and turned to Josie. “Thank you for taking care of her.” The old woman grunted, and nodded toward some unseen visage to her left. 

“Don’t thank me, it was Erika who found her. I just made the soup.” Carlos looked at the completely transparent patch of air that he assumed must be one of Josie’s angels. 

“Um. Thanks, Erika,” he stuttered to the air. The action seemed to appease Josie whose face crinkled into a wide grin. 

“We’ll let you two be on your way to do whatever it is you scientists do,” the old woman chortled. 

“Bye, Josie! Bye, Erika! Thanks again!” Bethenny called as Carlos led her inside and closed the door behind her. The lab erupted in excited chatter as all at once the scientists jumped up to hug the friend they all thought was lost. As Carlos watched his unconventional little family of scientists, he couldn’t help but think of Cecil’s words the previous evening. ‘ _Just because you lose something doesn’t mean you’ll never find it again._ ’ The thought drifted into his mind that maybe this was what Cecil had meant, that somehow the man had known about Bethenny and the supposed angel who had come to her rescue. How could he though when he had been trapped in some underground bunker the whole time just like the rest of them? Carlos’s mind wandered to the strange color of Cecil’s eyes and the inexplicable sensation of his touch. With a shake of his head, he forced himself to stop thinking, choosing for the time being to ignore the shiver that raced down his spine. Today was a day to celebrate that they had, indeed, all survived to see the sun once more. Cecil was a mystery for another day entirely. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Street Cleaning Day is one of my favorite episodes by far. Also I like writing about the scientists because I like them, even if they still won't ring the doorbell on the non-existent house.  
> and the similarity to another one of my stories with the checking vitals is intentional, though not necessarily important depending on how you look at it. mostly just because all my stories tie themselves together in one way or another.  
> Anyway thanks so much for the feedback so far! I'm glad you guys are enjoying the story. :)


	6. Insomniatic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carlos thought a lot of things were real before Night Vale. Then again, he also thought a lot of things weren’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just a quick headcanon that gets mentioned in this chapter and later on: Cecil's eyes shift colors like a mood ring based on his emotions. Their natural color at equilibrium is an iridescent violet. Okay, carry on. :)

“Say something,” Carlos muttered as he switched off the seismometer.  Andrea slammed the door of the equipment locker.

“What do you want me to say?”  Her voice was cold and biting as she turned to face him.  “That was harsh, Carlos.  Ten years we’ve been friends, and I’ve never heard you so out of line.”

“You think I was wrong to give them the choice?” Carlos crossed his arms defensively in preparation for the coming argument.  It wasn’t often that the two fought, but when they did it was almost always guaranteed to evolve into a rough shouting match.  

“I think you were wrong to turn it into some twisted goddamn ultimatum, yes.  It’s no surprise they all just walked right out.” 

“All I told them was if they were going to ignore the entire basis of our research, they needed to find other employment.  We came here to find answers and apparently that’s no longer a priority.  Which begs the question, what are we even still doing here?” He gestured around the lab with a rhetorical shrug.  

“Some of us stay because hard as it is to believe, we actually _like_ it here,” Andrea snapped.  “Just because you can’t fit something into your little box of logic and equations doesn’t mean it’s not worth spending time on.” She paused and took a breath.  “Carlos, I know your life’s been rough, and I know you like things to be even and structured and sensible, but sometimes it’s okay for things to not make sense.”  Andrea let out a strained little laugh.  “Hell, I wish the whole world made a little less sense.  I mean, isn’t it amazing to believe in something impossible, and realize that just because you believe in it, it can actually exist?”

“I believe in things I understand,” Carlos retorted, his voice raised to combat the shrieking that drifted through the walls of the laboratory from the edge of town.  It had begun a few nights ago, a horrible wailing that had unfortunately become a nightly event.  Andrea covered and uncovered her face with her hands, letting out another frustrated little sound.  

“You don’t get it, Carlos.  You just don’t understand.”  Her head dropped momentarily before she looked back up at him.  “I really wish you did.”  Regretfully, she slipped out of her lab coat and set it on the empty end of one of the exam tables.  Carlos stared at the jacket as if it were venomous.  “I’m sorry,” she shouted over the disembodied screeching.  As an afterthought and to avoid further shouting, she quickly stepped around the table and hugged Carlos tightly.  “I know you’re not sleeping, and you’re hardly eating, and it feels like hell,” she paused to offer a small, understanding smile, “but it’s all going to make sense one of these days.  And after that everything will be different, I promise.”  

Carlos just watched helplessly as his best friend, his last actual tie to the sanity of the outside world, walked out the door and left him entirely alone in a laboratory full of useless science.  In the absence of any other clear direction, he eventually decided to at least attempt sleeping even though the sun had only just slipped below the horizon.  The thin walls of his apartment were negligibly better at blocking out the shrieking, so he simply lay on the lumpy little mattress in the clothes he had been too drained to change out of and wished for sleep.  

As was becoming the norm, sleep seemed to evade the scientist quite effectively for a long time.  He hesitated to check his watch, knowing that although it kept perfect time everywhere else in the world, here in Night Vale it would read preposterously incongruent times.  One morbidly curious glance reassured the theory as the watch claimed it was 3:28 in the afternoon.  Carlos rolled onto his back with a sigh and tried to clear his mind.  It wasn’t that he was thinking too deeply about any one thing in particular; on the contrary his thoughts had an increasingly frequent habit of dissolving into nonsense until his head began to throb.  It didn’t help that the still air in the little apartment was stifling.  He rolled back onto his side and stared blankly at the radio on his bedside table.  It kept supposed Night Vale time, so he used it as an alarm clock.  Despite his emphatic assertions to the contrary, he also had been using it lately to fall asleep.  Whether or not he was willing to admit it even to himself, Carlos liked the smooth tones of Cecil’s voice.  Even on the nights when the radio host was ranting about people who disagreed with his conspiracy theories or prattling on about the dangers of public libraries, Carlos found it soothing to lie down and close his eyes and just listen.  Some nights it helped him sleep.  Other nights it at least drowned out the shrieking enough that he could focus his thoughts into steady coherence.  That night as he impulsively switched on the radio, Cecil seemed to be talking about a small group of polar bears migrating through town that had been turned away from local businesses on the basis that they were in violation of the ‘ _no shirt, no shoes, no service_ ’ policy.  

Carlos closed his eyes and tried again to clear his mind.  This time it worked a little better, at least well enough that he could focus his thoughts onto a single subject.  Over and over his mind kept replaying Andrea’s odd argument.  She had made it sound like there was some great secret that if he could only discover it, the whole town would suddenly become logical and ordinary.  She had said impossible things existed if you chose to believe in them.  Carlos thought quite a lot of things were impossible.  Unfortunately in the eleven months he had lived in Night Vale, he had also discovered quite a lot of those impossible things really existed.  He had discovered that cats can float and forests can absorb carbon life forms and five-headed dragons can apparently run for public office, though he had never actually _seen_ the supposed candidate and could never tell if people were talking about a literal five-headed dragon or just speaking in metaphors.  Carlos went down the list of things he still believed were impossible.  The list was alarmingly short.  

In fact, at that moment he could only think of three absolutely impossible concepts - snow, ever leaving the desert, and love.  The first one he knew was simply a reaction to the smothering desert heat.  Somewhere in the world, even now, there was snow.  Snow was not at all impossible; in fact, it was highly likely.  Leaving the desert also, Carlos knew, was entirely possible.  He had left once since arriving in Night Vale, right at the end of his first month, just to get to Phoenix for a few days so he could pick up the last shipment of instruments from the university and call his grandmother on her birthday.  Now that he considered it, he wasn’t sure why he hadn’t left again since.  It seemed a simple enough escape from the oppressive strangeness to just drive across the city limits and keep driving until the world made sense again.  Deep down, something inside him was afraid the world outside had disappeared in the months since he had left.   He was afraid if he drove past the city limit sign he would just keep driving until he would end up right back where he had started.  So leaving the desert was unlikely, but not impossible.  That left love.  His eyes flitted involuntarily to the dark outline of the radio on the dresser.  If everything else impossible seemed to exist in Night Vale, then why not love?  Cecil claimed to love him after all.  Carlos had started calling him sometimes, just occasionally, to ask about strange aspects of town that locals would probably have more experience with.  A few times they had even met for coffee, though he had made the professional nature of their visits as clear as he possibly could.  In the end, he found he actually enjoyed Cecil’s company, even if the man sometimes said the most absurd things or just stared at him with that same strange flickering smile like he was struggling to contain some splendid secret. 

Carlos didn’t love Cecil.  Love was still impossible as far as he was concerned, but it would be inaccurate to claim he was indifferent to the radio host.  He was intrigued by him, sure.  Fond of his mellifluous voice, of his eyes that seemed to shift colors with alarming frequency, of the strange way he was able to convince anyone that even the most inconsequential topics were somehow incredibly significant.  Carlos sighed.  Maybe he was just fond of Cecil in general.  Even his thoughts had recently begun to wander to the radio host during the day; some nights he had been impatient for the lab to grow empty so he could turn up the radio while he cleaned up.  But it wasn’t love.  For impossible things to be real, even in Night Vale, you had to believe in them.  And Carlos did not believe in love.  

At least that was what he told himself as he finally fell asleep listening to Cecil discuss polar bear tourism on the radio.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this is the halfway point in the story, so we're halfway there! Thanks to everyone who's been reading so far :)


	7. Meteor Shower

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sanity is a luxury Night Vale seems to dangle just out of a certain scientist’s reach these days. In between the half-asleep daydreams and the waking nightmares it’s all he can do to hold on to that voice....

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another headcanon worth tossing out there (not that it's too important but I like sharing these with all you lovely readers): Cecil has the worst taste in clothes. he often matches most things rather well, but tends to gravitate towards ugly sweaters and insanely bright and clashy colors. He also has the actual worst taste in music, but that's a headcanon for another story altogether.  
> Also: I was reminded that Cecil lives in an apartment canonically oops. I'm a rebel though, so in this version it's a townhouse. okay anyway now we're good to go - on to my favorite chapter yet!

Carlos sat on the edge of the bed in his dingy, sticky bedroom staring down at the phone in his hand. He wiped absently at his brow and blinked away the yawn he was too tired to exhale. Cecil’s number was all dialed in; he only had to press the call button, though the action seemed far more complicated than it should be. Tonight was the Leonids, at least in the rest of the world. Maybe not in topsy-turvy Night Vale where nothing at all made sense. He reasoned that the information could be of some use to Cecil, at least as a filler for the show in the slim chance there was no major cataclysm to announce today. The truth was, Carlos wasn’t doing all that well. Between not sleeping and losing every single one of his scientists to the strange insanity of the dreadful town, it had been a long three weeks alone in the laboratory. Every trace of familiarity and every ounce of comfort had slipped through his fingers; and even with all his strangeness, Cecil seemed to be the most anchored, adjusted part of Carlos’s new life in the boiling, endless desert. Carlos knew Cecil wouldn’t be bothered by a call from him. Probably pleased, in fact. He’d probably even _enjoy_ sitting quietly and listening to all the rambling thoughts Carlos couldn’t connect, would maybe even try to help him piece together some semblance of reason. Convinced by his illogical streak, Carlos pressed dial. As usual, precisely two rings later Cecil’s bright voice bubbled through the receiver. 

“Carlos!” The scientist could tell Cecil was smiling his strange secret-keeping smile again. “I’m so glad you called me! How are you this lovely afternoon?”

“Fine,” Carlos lied. “You?”

“Splendid. Quite splendid, especially now that I’m talking to you.” After all his months in Night Vale and conversations with Cecil, Carlos still hadn’t fully adjusted to being so persistently and openly admired. As a result, he never knew how to respond to the radio host’s irrational adoration. He slipped off the wire frames of his glasses and rubbed at his eyes to ease his growing headache. If Cecil felt the awkward silence at all, he didn’t mention it, just breathed quietly on the other end of the line. 

“Um, so,” Carlos stuttered. He’d been oddly transfixed by Cecil’s steady breathing and was struggling to formulate a sentence that wouldn’t come out backwards. “Tonight are the Leonids. Falling stars. Meteor shower,” he clarified. The scientist wasn’t sure how astronomically savvy Cecil was, but he assumed not very since the man apparently refused to believe in the basic existence of the moon. 

“Oh my. Are they going to make impact here in Night Vale?” Cecil asked with a touch of wonder and curiosity. Not concern, because being afraid of a meteoric collision would make sense, and this was Night Vale and nothing here made sense. 

“No. They’ll just be shooting across the sky. I just thought if you wanted to inform people for…” Carlos suddenly felt stupid. There had been no actual, good reason for calling. He had just wanted the comfort of someone to talk to besides himself. Cecil must have been able to tell, because his response was pleasant and cordial.

“That sounds wonderful! Thank you for your suggestion. I will definitely inform my listeners not to miss one of nature’s great light shows.” 

“Alright,” Carlos finally mumbled, not knowing what else to say. He wanted very badly to tell Cecil about everything – the loneliness, the sleepless nights, the waking nightmares of being adrift on a dreadfully endless ocean of hot sand, and the increasingly common fantasies of cool hands caressing his temples to ease the headaches and a smooth sonorous voice to soothe his restless mind into sleep. Cecil inhaled quietly, probably to regretfully inform him that his break was nearly over, but Carlos cut him off first. “They’ll peak around 11:00 if my calculations hold up. I’ll probably be out at the sand wastes because that should be far enough from town to see the stars clearly.” There was another brief pause; he was unsure of a smooth transition, but tried his best anyway. “Your show ends around 10:30, so if you aren’t too tired after, there are a few things I’ve wanted to talk to you about.” 

“Oh, how lovely! 11:00 at the sand wastes. Yes, I’ll definitely be there.” Carlos could hear the excitement dancing just beneath Cecil’s carefully measured voice. 

“I’ll…see you there then,” he finished awkwardly. 

“I look forward to it. Have a splendid afternoon, Carlos,” Cecil said genially before ending the call. Carlos stared back down at the phone in his hands, too tired to think about the implications of the plans they had just made. 

\--

At precisely 10:56 Carlos lay flat on his back on the sand, watching the myriad of strange stars as they arranged themselves into unfamiliar constellations. If he closed his eyes he could imagine himself suspended somewhere up among them, weightless and free. After a few minutes of fabricated peace, he sighed and opened his eyes again to the darkened desert and Cecil watching him from a careful distance. He sat up with a start. 

“I’m sorry I startled you,” the radio host said sheepishly. 

“No, you’re,” Carlos waved a hand. “You’re fine. I was just trying to find a good position for viewing the stars.” 

“Ah, yes, the sand makes an accommodating mattress. I find however that I’m scrubbing it off for days,” Cecil said conversationally. “That’s why I prefer-“ he slung a hideously pink pack from his shoulder and removed a bundle, “to use a blanket,” he finished as he spread a large, cheery gingham blanket onto the sand. He crouched to his knees to smooth it out to the corners and proceeded to stretch himself into a sitting position in a fashion equal parts gangly and graceful. Cecil motioned for Carlos to sit next to him on the empty half. The scientist cautiously seated himself, careful to keep a space between them like he always did. As he sat, Cecil leaned himself back on his elbows with a contented sigh. “When I was a kid I used to sneak out here after curfew to stargaze on long summer nights,” he reminisced quietly. “I think I still recall most of the constellations.” He chanced a peek over at Carlos who had returned to lying down, arms crossed behind his head. “You wouldn’t happen to want to see a few, would you?” Carlos glanced up at emerald eyes, semi-luminescent in the darkness, and that cheshire grin he saw so frequently in his half-awake world of hazy early morning dreams. Unable to find his voice, the scientist simply nodded. Cecil leaned carefully closer, still preserving the few inches between them that Carlos suddenly wanted very desperately to close. Cecil pointed a slender finger toward an unusually bright star. “That is Alidros, the anchor star. The cluster around her,” he drew a small circle in the night sky, “is called the Flower Crown of the Goddess.” To Carlos that sounded supremely fabricated, but Cecil announced it with such surety that the scientist tried to imagine the shapes into existence. “This one,” Cecil continued, reaching across Carlos to a line of three smaller stars near the horizon, “is the collar of Candita, the dog who is a safe distance away from the dog park.” The mixture of Cecil’s silky voice, his close proximity, and the faint scent of mahogany elicited a dizzy smile from Carlos. For the first time in several long months, he felt like laughing – at the ridiculousness of Cecil and the stars and the whole sweltering desert full of ridiculous things. Taking Carlos’s smile as encouragement, Cecil rolled back onto his own half of the blanket, sat up, and reached into the offensively pink pack once more to produce a thermos and two small plastic cups. “Tea?” Carlos hadn’t realized how parched he was, and nodded eagerly, sitting up to balance the cup. He took a gulp and immediately began coughing as the liquid scalded the inside of his mouth. “Oh dear, Carlos, I’m so sorry. I should have warned you it was probably still pretty hot.” Cecil concernedly set down his own cup and reached across the gingham blanket as if to steady Carlos, until he seemingly remembered himself and quickly dropped his hand. “Are you alright?” Carlos’s cough had deteriorated into a tight, frustrated laugh. The brief moment of comfort had passed, and as he sat sipping hot tea in the middle of a scorching desert with a man who he wasn’t even entirely sure was human wearing a hunter orange cardigan so bright it nearly glowed in the dark, he was overwhelmed with the same smothering exasperation that was slowly consuming the remainder of his sanity. 

“No,” he choked out. “No, Cecil, I’m not alright. Nothing in this whole goddamn town is ever alright.” The weeks of frustration began to pour out of Carlos in a long stream of hoarse words. “The books are carnivorous, the sun rises in the wrong direction, my closet tries to bite me whenever I open it, my calculator sprouted wings last week, every logical outcome I test for comes out wrong, even basic mathematics has stopped working, and I’m the only one who finds it even slightly strange. You all-“ Cecil’s eyes flickered momentarily to the gingham blanket at the dissociation, “just accept it as normal, and maybe it _is_ for you, but even my research team has one-by-one just given up or given in and now I’ve lost them to the insanity of this place. I’m the only one still trying, the only one who still cares about why we even came here, the only one who still asks why or how, who still believes there have to be explanations for any of this and it’s lonely, Cecil.” His voice cracked slightly. He looked over at Cecil whose eyes had gone a dark, shadowy indigo – calm and quiet. “It’s so lonely having nobody to talk to. Some nights I feel like I’m losing my mind. And as if I couldn’t sleep already, every night there’s that horrible shrieking from the edge of town. So I turn on the radio and close my eyes and try to hold on to reality as best I can.” He exhaled heavily with a shake of his head as the words ran out. 

“Maybe you’re looking too close,” Cecil said so softly that it caused Carlos to meet those strangely drawing eyes. “Maybe you need to take a breath, a step back. Maybe you don’t actually need the _why_ s and the _how_ s. Maybe,” he leaned up onto his knees and reached out again, this time hesitating only briefly before resting a gentle hand on Carlos’s shoulder. The scientist fought to hide the involuntary tremor Cecil’s touch sent through him. “Maybe _why_ and _how_ are questions we were never meant to know the answers to, Carlos.” Cecil’s voice was quiet and laced with sincerity, that same strange contrast the scientist had noticed only a handful of times. “All we can do is experience and observe and accept that some things in life are simply unknowable.” Carlos removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose to slow another oncoming migraine. Sleep deprivation was taking its painful toll. 

“I just don’t understand, I don’t know,” he admitted, defeated. Cecil removed his hand and gingerly tilted Carlos’s chin up to face him. Even slightly out of focus, Carlos could see the concern crossing Cecil’s pale, angular face. The touch of his fingertips as they pressed against both of Carlos’s temples was cool and soft - an oasis in the gritty, sultry desert night. It was even more refreshing than he had so frequently imagined it would be. His eyes involuntarily fluttered closed, and he wondered briefly if he would open them to the dingy floral wallpaper of his bedroom. Instead, he opened them to pools of softly luminescent crystalline blue. For a moment he forgot the desert and the nonsensical city whose lights loomed on the periphery of his vision and even the constant throbbing in his head. He forgot everything but those dazzling eyes so filled with worry, but still so striking in their clarity. 

“How long has it been since you slept?” Cecil asked soothingly. 

“Three days. Maybe four. I can’t remember,” Carlos admitted. “It all just blurs together.” 

“Why don’t you come sleep at my place tonight?” His pale blue eyes widened as soon as the words left his lips. Carlos’s drooping eyelids shot open, and Cecil’s hands dropped instantly to his sides before he awkwardly tucked them beneath his elbows. “Of course, I’d take the sofa,” he quickly stumbled as red flushed his cheeks. He took a slow breath and looked directly at Carlos as he carefully enunciated. “It’s farther from the howling on the edge of town, and I just did the linens yesterday so everything smells like fabric softener.” 

\--

Carlos was glad for the offer of a room that didn’t have a mysterious, oozing red stain that throbbed along the wall. Even though he wasn’t sure what he expected the Voice of Night Vale’s home to be exactly, he was still surprised when Cecil led him up the steps to a high-end townhouse with strange patches of magenta ivy crawling up the brick exterior. Apparently community radio paid better than government-funded research. 

“Now, I have to warn you,” Cecil said as he inserted a key into the first of four locks on the ornate turquoise door. “It’s a bit of a mess.” He smiled shyly before crouching down to the bottom lock and whispering a word in a language Carlos had never heard. There was a soft click, and Cecil pushed the door inwards, motioning for Carlos to enter first. If Cecil considered this a mess, Carlos silently swore to never let the man see his lab. The living room was spotless from the intricate molding on the vaulted ceiling to the subtle pale lavender stripes on the walls, to the polished birch floors. The furniture and décor was chic, though minimal. The only evidence that anyone even lived there was an open copy of the now-blank Daily Journal on the coffee table and a small blurry photo of a dog in a frame on the wall. Cecil finished clicking all the bolts back into place again. “I’m so glad I upgraded to the expanded model when I bought this place,” he beamed with a pleased little glance around the room as he removed his cardigan and hung it in a closet Carlos hadn’t even noticed was there. The dimensions of the house didn’t add up right to the exterior, but he was far too tired to ask or even care why. “Can I get you anything to eat or drink? I have some leftover veal cutlets, gluten-free digestion crackers, coffee, kumquat juice..” he trailed off. 

“Hm?” Carlos had completely zoned out, missing the extensive menu entirely. Cecil’s eyes softened and he opened his mouth as if to speak, but closed it again instead. For a moment he just stood there before shaking his head quickly as if remembering his manners. 

“My room is on the left. I don’t know what will fit, but there are some clothes in the dresser if you want to get rid of all the sand. Just leave yours outside the door and I’ll take care of them. The bathroom’s the first door on the right so you can get washed up.” Cecil pointed directions down the hallway in an attempt to be accommodating. Carlos found himself just staring at the radio host, his blond hair catching in the light and seeming almost as strangely iridescent as his eyes. His long-sleeved mint green button down and coordinating striped tie both still seemed pristine, Carlos noted, despite the fact it was nearly midnight and they had spent the last half hour lying on a blanket in the sand. He wondered briefly if the man could truly be cold enough to wear long sleeves _and_ a cardigan in the middle of a desert, but quickly realized that Cecil had asked him another question that he had again missed entirely. 

“I’m sorry,” Carlos ran a flustered hand through his messy hair. Cecil just smiled warmly and repeated the question. 

“If you’re not lactose-intolerant, I have just the thing for when you’re finished, if you’d like?”

“No, I’m- I mean.” Carlos shook his head. “Yeah, thanks.” The words stumbled terribly, but Cecil’s smile just flickered softly at the corners before he turned towards the archway that led to what Carlos assumed was the kitchen. 

It may have been partially due to the exhaustion, but Carlos was thrilled with Cecil’s shower. The water – or what seemed like water, only an electric green and slightly thicker than water – fell from the ceiling like a cool rain, cleansing and calm. Carlos eyed the rainbow of bottles before selecting a deep red that smelled faintly like raspberry. The thought flittered across his mind that he was currently completely exposed in the house of a person he hardly knew, who had eyes that changed colors and who had declared passionate love for him multiple times on public radio. But something felt safe here. Safe from the peering eyes that Carlos felt watching him every day, safe from the haunting screams that echoed through the dilapidated walls of his apartment every night, safe maybe even from the strangeness that weighed heavy like a presence around Night Vale. Beneath one of the double sinks, he found a towel and used it to dry off. A peek out into the hallway confirmed that the coast was clear, and also that his gritty clothes had already disappeared. Silently chiding himself for forgetting to keep his underclothes, he crept across the hall into Cecil’s bedroom and shut the door. 

The entire room glowed with a pale blueish light, and looked slightly more lived-in than the rest of Cecil’s house. There were photo frames and stacks of papers on a short side table, and a cube-shaped clock that read 12:47 in numbers that spiraled in and out of focus. A tall dresser stood against the wall opposite the low bed. In the top drawer he found a row of neatly-folded boxers, a few white v-necks, and a spectrum of carefully matched socks. Carlos blushed and almost shut the drawer before remembering his own clothes were currently being laundered. After a silent argument with himself, he quickly snatched out the first pair of boxers he found – light pink and patterned with small red fish. Something about that didn’t surprise him much. He wasn’t sure which was the most embarrassing part of the situation – knowing exactly what Cecil’s underwear looked like, knowing he had to wear them, or knowing that Cecil was also fully aware of the situation. Flustered, he slipped them on; of course they were a little too big on him. He expected as much, since even though Cecil was willowy and slender, Carlos was a good three inches shorter than the statistical average and small-built at that. He dug through the drawer of shirts with a sigh until he found the smallest one, a gray tee bearing the Night Vale Community Radio logo and multicolored splatters he hoped were paint. In one of the drawers he managed to find some workout sweatpants with a drawstring that helped with the boxer problem considerably. He yawned as he tousled his hair, willing it to dry. Now that he was inside a building that actually had air conditioning, he was slightly chilled. It was a welcome feeling, but almost as uncomfortable as the heat. He opened the tall closet door to a vast array of button-downs and vests and bowties and ponchos and fuzzy sportcoats with coordinating plaid pants that felt slippery to the touch. Somewhere behind the small collection of kilts at the very back, Carlos found a burgundy zip hoodie that bore the slogan ‘ _My significantly older friend went to 1793 and all I got was this fabulously soft jacket._ ’ With a shrug, he slipped it on and zipped it. The sleeves were obscenely long; he wondered if they were even long on Cecil’s lanky frame. The headache that had been allayed by the shower had begun to creep its way back, and Carlos wanted nothing more than to lie down. Specifically, to lie down next to a cool body whose fingers would wind their way into his hair and who would maybe just talk quietly until he fell asleep to the sound of that voice… but he had lingered so long in the shower, reluctant to leave the calming water, that he was sure Cecil was asleep by now. Just as he was about to climb into the bed, there came a soft knock at the door. Slipping on his glasses, he opened the door to find Cecil wearing an unnervingly yellow pajama set. Cecil’s lips parted as his eyes glanced down and back up, taking in the sight of Carlos wearing his old clothes. His cheeks flushed a soft pink as he stammered, “I-I um, I made you this.” He offered a glass filled with what Carlos assumed was warm milk. “There’s honey in it and a bit of valerian root to help you stay asleep – also a bit of foxglove to ward off possession. There’s been some of that in the complex next door. Better safe than undead, I always say.” Cecil chuckled nervously as he adjusted his already-level horn rim glasses and ran a hand through his already-smooth blond hair. 

“Thanks,” Carlos yawned. 

“Oh, I almost forgot the bed. May I?” Cecil asked politely. Carlos stepped aside and allowed the man into his own room, which for some reason struck him as humorous. He took a sip of the strange drink, hoping whatever Cecil said he had put in the milk was really safe to consume. “It’s a good bed,” Cecil rambled on cheerily, “only you have to smooth it out carefully. Very particular. Otherwise it can get a little feisty, will kick you right out on to the floor.” Carlos sipped the last of the strange milk while he watched Cecil smooth rhythmic circles onto the pinstripe bedspread, fluff the pillows, and slip something red and faintly glowing under the bed frame. “All set,” he finished with a nod, turning back to Carlos to retrieve the empty glass from his hands. “If you need anything, I’ll be right down the hall in the living room.” 

_I need you_ , Carlos thought. He wanted to ask Cecil to stay, to make the headache go away like he had out at the sand wastes. He wanted to ask Cecil to climb in with him and wrap him close to keep what was left of his sanity intact, to hold him together. But somehow, he knew he couldn’t ask or wasn’t allowed to; even though he also knew Cecil would stay if he _did_ ask. Cecil would do anything he asked. But instead Carlos let the moment pass without saying a word. Instead he climbed into the bed alone, and Cecil shut out the light, transforming himself into a silhouette framed in the doorway. 

“Goodnight, dear Carlos,” he said as he closed the door. Carlos listened carefully, but was thankful to hear mostly silence, and only very little shrieking in the distance. Through the tall window, he watched the moon trace a lonely path through the sky until, in the strange safety of Cecil’s protection, he drifted off into a deep sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love this chapter for so many reasons. It's just sweet and I can't help but really like the idea of Carlos kind of losing his mind, and Cecil trying to help keep him sane as best he can. It's actually technically one long chapter with the next one, but it seemed too long to post altogether, and also it kinda breaks nicely here anyway.


	8. Paper Fortune

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Night Vale everything can be dangerous - especially questions.

In a foggy dream, Cecil was sitting on the side of Carlos’s bed, busily scrawling away on a scrap of what looked like colorful wrapping paper. It had to be a dream, because he was using a pen, the first one Carlos had seen in weeks due to the reinstatement of the municipal ban. Cecil looked up suddenly, his amber eyes warm like honey in the late morning sunlight. His smile was vibrant as he reached over and ran his fingers through dark, messy curls, tucking them behind Carlos’s ear. Cecil looked impossibly perfect in the morning light. “You’re dreaming,” he murmured. Carlos continued to watch in fascination as dexterous fingers folded the wrapping paper into a paper fortune like the ones all the girls used to make in middle school. A few quiet moments later, content with the result, Cecil turned back to Carlos, leaned in close and whispered, “Close your eyes, beautiful, wonderful Carlos.” The scientist smiled widely as Cecil gently kissed the side of his forehead exactly where thinking always hurt the worst. In the same smooth motion, he set the fortune on the bedside table and rose to leave. He paused in the doorway to whisper a word that sounded like ‘ _raspberry_.’ 

“Hm?” Carlos yawned. 

“Nothing,” Cecil replied, one corner of his mouth tilting into a shy smile before he closed the door softly behind him. 

\--

Carlos awoke with a thud as the bed spat him onto the floor. Between the blue glow in the room and the lack of sunlight outside, he was a bit disoriented. The swirling numbers on the wall clock read 1:38. Outside the window it was raining, but Carlos didn’t want to know _what_ it was raining, so he pushed himself to his feet and pulled the tall ivory curtains closed quickly. With a contented stretch, he looked around the room. Sheer curiosity got the better of him, and he wandered over to the bedside table. Sure enough, there sat the little paper fortune, neatly folded in bright paper patterned with reindeer and snowflakes. Self-consciously, his right hand traced along his forehead where Cecil’s lips must have also really been. A warm shiver passed through him and he couldn’t help smiling as he unfolded the fortune. 

___Good morning, Carlos!_  
  
 _I hope you slept well. I apologize for leaving so early to work. I would have called in sick, but just last week Station Management sent out a memo stating that all sick day requests must be accompanied by physical proof of severe maiming , death, or the H1N1 virus which they are attempting to keep from spreading as badly as it did last year. There is decaf coffee in the pot and a lovely avocado gazpacho in the fridge. Make yourself at home!_

_ If you’re gone by the time I get back, call me and let me know you’re alright.  
Cecil _

Carlos carefully folded the note and was about to tuck it into his pocket when he remembered that his pocket wasn’t actually _his_ pocket. He glanced around and caught sight of his plaid shirt and khakis all freshly laundered and folded in a neat pile on the dresser. He held them up to his nose. They smelled wonderful, like jasmine and lavender. Tentatively, he held up the floppy sleeve of the burgundy hoodie he still wore and inhaled for comparison. It smelled like teakwood and Cecil. He decided a few more minutes of guilty pleasure wouldn’t hurt. After all, Cecil never had to know. Carlos wandered out through the pristine open dining room.  The kitchen was compact, but quaintly charming. It took a while of poking through the cupboards until he finally found a mug that wasn’t filled with holes or adorned with a truly preposterous number of handles. It was small and the chipping paint depicted a horrifyingly grisly image of Little Red Riding Hood with a bloody axe above the slogan ‘ _Fairytale Land – the actual happiest place on earth! - 1984_ ’, but again Carlos just shrugged and lifted the still-warm coffee pot. The liquid inside was thicker than coffee should be, but he took a sip and it tasted alright; he tried not to think too much about what was actually in it. He noticed that the sun was shining on this side of the house, so he leaned against the counter by the window and sipped his coffee slowly. It was astounding how much a good night of sleep could do for one’s outlook. He felt more normal and at ease than he had in the almost-twelve months since arriving in town. After he finished a second mug of the coffee-like substance, Carlos found himself wandering to the living room window, curious to see if it was still raining on this side of the house. Viscous pools of a brownish liquid and the occasional soggy donut freckled the cobblestone street. Carlos watched as Old Woman Josie ambled along the sidewalk, mouth stuffed with saturated pastries. She spotted him in the window and shot him a wink accompanied by a friendly wave. Waving back amiably, he peered to the opposite curb where he had parked his car last night behind Cecil’s coupe. He realized with a shock that the entire opposite side of the street was different than it had been the night before. The previous night he had parked in a long line of parked cars and noticed as he stepped around and onto the sidewalk that there was a lovely little gated park with a fountain that seemed to flow in impossible directions. Now as he blinked, he was stunned to see a row of slightly obsolescent houses abutting a completely empty curb. 

His head was already beginning to spin again as he realized that he wasn’t safe from Night Vale after all, not even here in the oasis of Cecil’s seemingly normal townhouse. His stomach grumbled a complaint, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten in longer than he could recall. He shivered and hugged his arms to his body. How Cecil could exist in such perpetual cold and yet still feel the need to wear layers out into the sunbaked desert, Carlos couldn’t understand. Hurrying to the kitchen, he set his mug in the sink and scrounged through cupboards until he found what appeared to be some sort of berry muffin. He smelled it to make sure it was still good and decided to take it with him back to Cecil’s bedroom where he could at least bundle in the blankets to warm up a bit. On the way he was met with even more reminders he hadn’t noticed the previous night of just how off things were, even within the fragile normality he felt around Cecil. The photo frames on the dresser contained nothing but blurry, out-of-focus shots of scenery as if the people or focal objects in the foreground had been removed. The wall the bed was situated against seemed strangely permeable, Carlos discovered, as he misjudged the distance to the light switch and accidentally slipped his hand straight through. Even the pale blueish glow didn’t seem to originate from any particular light source as much as it simply existed in the room. Carlos let out a frustrated grunt as he climbed back into the bed, flopping down against a pillow and pulling the blanket up over his head as if it would somehow block out the fact that the world had once again ceased to make any sense. 

\--

The sound of knocking on the door woke the scientist from a restless dream. He sat up with a bolt, unaware he had even fallen asleep. His glasses were cocked to one side, his hair matted where it had been unceremoniously squished against the bed frame. The unexpected nap had left him dreadfully disoriented. The sun seemed to be in the wrong side of the sky, and the clock on the wall read 7:23, though he had learned not to trust clocks most of the time.

“Carlos?” Cecil asked quietly. “Are you awake?” Carlos glanced down, realizing with sudden horror that he was still wearing Cecil’s clothes. He swore under his breath. 

“Just a second,” he replied, hastily tugging the blankets up on the bed, which growled at him in response. He ran a hand through his hair in a futile attempt to tame it and adjusted his glasses before opening the door. Cecil smiled at him cheerily, not seeming to notice just how much of a mess Carlos was at the moment. 

“Good morning,” Cecil announced brightly. Carlos’s eyes widened, and Cecil’s smile vanished. “I didn’t wake you did I? I know you’re tired, I was going to let you sleep, but then I saw you’d been up for coffee and-“ his smooth voice stuttered, which sounded unusual, though adorable. He sighed quickly. “Do you want pancakes?” Carlos shut his eyes, feeling his cheeks flush at the realization. 

“I’m sorry, Cecil,” he apologized, covering his face with a hand. “I feel terrible. I didn’t intend to fall asleep again, and now I’ve overstayed and put you on the couch two nights running.” Cecil laughed unexpectedly, dropping his head and allowing his shoulders to shake slightly. 

“It’s not _really_ morning, Carlos. You’ve only been here one day.” He grinned, cocking his head to one side and biting his lower lip adoringly. 

“But it’s 7, and you just offered me pancakes,” Carlos explained weakly. 

“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. I just didn’t want you to miss it.” Carlos was sure he was blushing as he stared at the floor intently. “I’m glad you stayed, though,” Cecil offered after a moment. 

“My car disappeared. I think the whole street disappeared,” Carlos mumbled. Cecil let out a breathy sigh.

“I forgot - it’s Tuesday, isn’t it? It always seems to come one day too early in the week. All the same, I’m glad you’re still here.” Carlos glanced up at that, offering a semblance of a smile. “Anyway, pancakes?” Cecil asked again, clasping his hands behind his back. 

“Alright, just let me get dressed,” the scientist replied. Cecil nodded and bounced off to the kitchen. Carlos quickly dressed back in his own clothing, grateful to be wearing sleeves that didn’t dangle awkwardly past his fingertips. He left Cecil’s clothes outside the door and wandered out to the kitchen where he found the radio host mixing up a thick batter in a plastic dish. 

“I hope you don’t mind it’s made with rice flour. They started selling it a few weeks ago down at the Ralph’s and I can’t quite say I’ve gotten used to using it, though I’ve perfected a few recipes here and there. Do you like cardamom in your pancakes?” Carlos shrugged. “You will,” Cecil assured him, reaching down and producing a frying pan. He placed it on an open burner and turned to pull two plates from the cupboard next to the fridge. Carlos wondered if Cecil cooked often, but he felt somehow strange asking the man personal questions. 

“Thanks,” he said finally as he leaned against the countertop next to the stove. Cecil looked up at him curiously, as if he didn’t understand what he could have possibly done to merit gratitude. “For letting me stay here, for the clothes, and for making these,” the scientist nodded towards the batter shape Cecil was drawing in the pan using the tip of a spoon. Cecil just shrugged off the comment, but Carlos could tell the man was smiling slightly even as he focused intently on his edible art project. In a single graceful motion, he flipped the shape, which Carlos now realized was an angelfish, and began tracing a new shape in the opposite side of the pan. Cecil looked flawlessly composed as usual in a sweater vest of sky blue. His sleeves were rolled to the elbows however, revealing intricately twisted indigo tattoos that crept most of the way to his wrists. Carlos hadn’t taken Cecil to be the tattoo type; suddenly the cardigans and long sleeves made slightly more sense. Some of the shapes appeared to be tentacles that reminded Carlos vaguely of the HP Lovecraft novels he used to read for every book report in the fifth grade. He wanted to ask when Cecil had gotten the tattoos, if they had any significance, how far up his arms they went, maybe even spread across his shoulders… The scientist let out an amused snort at the growing list of personal questions he refused to ask. 

“How are you feeling today? Any better?” Cecil asked, looking away from his creations only long enough to flash a bright smile. Carlos nodded, his eyes still strangely drawn to watching Cecil’s slender hands carefully work away at the pancakes. There was something mesmerizing about the way he moved, as if every simple motion had some grander meaning. “It’s amazing how much a good night of sleep can change your outlook,” Cecil agreed, flipping another shape – an iguana – onto the plate. They were quiet for a long time. Carlos was content to watch Cecil work as giraffe after squirrel after octopus were flipped out onto the growing menagerie of pancakes. He was just flipping a perfectly browned soaring falcon to its second side when he finally spoke again, his voice shifting slightly into a more serious tone. “Have you thought any more about what I told you last night?” He asked the question without looking away from the pan. Carlos studied his face carefully, not exactly sure what he meant. Cecil glanced over at him before turning his attention back to the pancake, prodding at the edge with a spatula. “Can I ask you something?” 

“Sure,” Carlos replied. 

“When you say you lost your scientists to insanity, what do you mean? Do you mean you physically _lost_ them? Or that you found them wandering in the desert driven mad and incoherent?” Cecil’s tone was neither condescending nor sardonic, simply curious. 

“Neither, I guess,” Carlos admitted, crossing his arms defensively across his chest out of habit. “I guess what I meant is that there are basic tenets that we in the scientific field hold to. Beliefs. For example: the belief that everything is explainable.  That there is a fact behind every mystery.” He stared as Cecil carefully laid the falcon on the top of the pancake stack. “Night Vale started to get to them though. Almost half of them stopped showing up one-by-one. The rest just quit looking, quit trying. I would have them file reports on their findings, and when prompted for causes, they would simply write ‘ _Because it just is._ ’ And when asked for a description of processes or methods, they would answer ‘ _It doesn’t actually matter._ ’” Cecil carefully divided the pancakes between the two plates, first setting the iguana with the hawk and angelfish and then hesitating and swapping it with the squirrel. He handed the hawk plate to Carlos and led him to the rectangular dining room table.

“Is that such a bad thing?” he asked, seating Carlos at the end and scooting his own chair closer to the corner. 

“Well, yes,” Carlos answered simply. “We’re here to find answers. It’s a very bad thing to give up on the entire purpose of our research. I told them as much one day, and I told them anyone who didn’t see the point in trying to discover solid answers was free to leave. What was left of my team walked out the door that day.” He poked at the angelfish with the tip of his fork. “Now it’s just me and a strange breathing that emanates from my apartment.” Cecil nodded understandingly as he swallowed a bite of the iguana. 

“How do you know you’re not wrong?” he asked nonchalantly as he separated one of the iguanas legs carefully from the body. 

“What?” Carlos was slightly offended by the question even though he didn’t fully understand it. 

“How do you know you’re not wrong?” Cecil repeated simply, adding a smile to soften the question. It wasn’t much help, aside from seeming very out of place. “Maybe they didn’t give up. Maybe they just…stopped asking the wrong questions,” Cecil shrugged. 

“The questions aren’t wrong, Cecil. Questioning things, the need to know, pure curiosity – it’s the very framework of science itself,” Carlos explained as simply as he could. He knew Cecil wasn’t purposefully being unkind, so he tried his best to be patient.

“Alright, but if you keep asking the wrong questions, you’re going to kill yourself one of these days,” Cecil cautioned with a shake of his head. 

“I’m fairly certain you can’t die of frustration,” Carlos commented dryly. Cecil sighed and set his fork down, staring at the table for a moment. 

“Carlos, have you ever heard the story of curiosity and the cat?” he asked finally. 

“Curiosity killed the cat,” Carlos replied flatly. After all he’d been through, he wasn’t in the mood for a lecture on the merits of caution and the safety of going through life ignorantly blissful.

“Carlos,” Cecil said peevishly, crinkling his forehead in disapproval. “You spoiled the ending.” He huffed. “And anyway curiosity did _not_ kill the cat, not immediately. The cat was first abducted by secret police, a bag was placed over its head, and it was then tortured and interrogated for information it may or may not have actually known before it was placed against a brick wall and executed by firing squad.” Cecil dramatically sliced the head off the giraffe-shaped pancake as he finished the story. Carlos stared down wide-eyed at his untouched stack of pancakes, suddenly very thankful none of them were cats. Cecil sighed again, looking back up at Carlos with more patience. “If you keep asking the wrong questions, you’re going to kill yourself,” he repeated gently, carefully emphasizing each word. Carlos nodded, suddenly slightly frightened by the intensity in Cecil’s vermilion eyes. “Besides, like I said last night, some things we’re not able to know. And some things you shouldn’t question because knowing doesn’t matter. You’ll only drive yourself crazy trying to find out reasons why, when all along all you were meant to do was merely acknowledge that it happened.” It was startling how quickly Cecil seemed to slip from his terrifyingly foreboding radio persona back into the effervescently charming, quirky man who folded paper fortunes and wore ugly sweaters. 

“So what are the right questions then?” Carlos asked, his voice sounding scratchy and hoarse. Cecil’s strangely worded warning had shaken him slightly, and he found himself feeling almost as afraid of knowing as he already was of not knowing. Cecil thought for a moment, pushing the last bite of the giraffe around his plate. 

“The right question is ‘ _What do you believe?_ ’” His eyes were unblinking, pale lavender and remarkably clear as he waited for a response. Carlos looked away, feeling oddly exposed. 

“What do I believe?” he repeated with a short laugh. “I don’t believe half the things I see every day.” He squeezed his eyes shut, willing away the ever-present sense of insanity that crept at the edges of his consciousness.

“Maybe you should,” Cecil replied quietly. Carlos shook his head. 

“How?” He looked back up at Cecil, already beginning to feel the crushing sensation of drowning that had accompanied his every waking moment the past few weeks. Cecil reached out a hand and rested it on Carlos’s unconscious white-knuckled death grip on his fork. The muscles relaxed immediately at the soothing touch, allowing the fork to clatter softly to the tabletop. 

“Give me one evening, and I’ll show you. Do you trust me?” Carlos nodded because he did trust Cecil, despite every logical nerve in his body telling him not to. Cecil nodded too, rolling down his sleeves and buttoning the cuffs. “Finish your pancakes, I’ll walk you to your car.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know canonically the glow cloud (all hail!) only rains dead animals, but I can't help my strange attraction to normal Night Vale clouds raining random objects that change every time as well. And Cecil smells like the teakwood & mahogany candles at B&BW and you can't convince me otherwise.  
> Thanks for the reviews and new follows! You guys are the best c:


	9. Mirage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If the answer to reaching sanity is to firmly grasp insanity, does that make belief the scientifically optimal choice? Or does it just make you crazy?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I warned that this would probably dissolve into fluff along the way. But don't worry the plot is not sacrificed entirely in the process, I just really like the idea of the imaginary zone and I can't help but slip in a bit of these two being adorable amidst all the Night Vale creepiness. :3

“So where are we exactly?” Carlos asked as he allowed Cecil to position him carefully in the middle of a sandy patch just off the highway. Cecil was very particular in his placement, tugging the sleeve of Carlos’s jacket to move him one inch to the right, then taking a step back and shaking his head, tugging him back to the left again. Carlos couldn’t see why it mattered that much, since there was nothing out there at all except the occasional sprig of sagebrush and a few cacti further out. 

“This is the imaginary zone,” Cecil said, carefully pulling Carlos one step forward before leaning back and nodding in approval. He didn’t seem to think further explanation was required. 

“What is an imaginary zone?” Carlos pressed, not satisfied with Cecil’s answer. 

“Well,” the host drawled as he searched for a suitable explanation. “Nobody quite knows,” he admitted finally. “They’re patches of existence in Night Vale that for some reason or another were never fully shaped. Some people say they were mistakes made back when the desert was created that City Council later tried to undo. But they could only erase the mistake, leaving unusable creative energy.” Carlos just stared blankly at him. He knew he should be more open to believing in things by now, especially since Cecil had cut his broadcast dangerously short specifically to bring him here afterwards. Cecil caught the shift in his demeanor. “Carlos,” he said the word with a bit of a purr. “Carlos, Carlos.” The scientist wondered if Cecil was stalling until he found the right words, or if he just liked saying his name. “Do you trust me?” he asked again, tilting his head slightly to one side. 

“Yes,” Carlos said finally. A smile played across Cecil’s lips. 

“Good. Close your eyes.” Carlos did as he was told, but he still felt Cecil’s hands reach carefully around him from behind and cover his eyes. He seemed to actually _radiate_ the strange cool sensation that starkly contrasted the scientist’s warm breath against his palms. Everything was contrast with Cecil, Carlos was beginning to realize. The radio host leaned in close, his voice lilting and hypnotic. “Where would you like to be? A forest, a canyon, an ocean – anywhere you like.” Carlos struggled to think of somewhere he’d like to be; he found it hard to remember anything at all before the endlessness of the desert. “Where were you happiest?” Cecil prompted after a pause. Carlos thought back to his seventh birthday when his grandmother had taken him to the pier over the lake. It had been the first time he’d ever seen a ferris wheel, and he had been terrified of the height at first, but still remembered the day fondly. 

“A boardwalk,” he replied finally. 

“Wonderful,” Cecil continued, his smile seeping into his voice. “Right now, you’re standing on a boardwalk. Beneath the wooden planks, water is lapping in rhythmic little waves. All around you are lights, glowing warm in the darkening evening. Do you see the lights?” Carlos shook his head. He couldn’t see anything, his eyes were closed. “Carlos,” Cecil continued patiently, “to see the lights, you have to believe they’re really there.” 

“Cecil, there’s _nothing_ here,” Carlos sighed in exasperation. 

“Do you trust me to tell you the truth?” Cecil asked quietly. “Do you believe that I would never lie to you?” Carlos hesitated a moment, then nodded slowly. “You really _are_ surrounded by glowing lights. They line the boardwalk and the food carts and the midway behind you. Do you see the lights now, Carlos?” Carlos thought for a long moment. In this strange, terrifying world where he trusted nothing - least of all his own senses - he somehow knew deep down that he trusted Cecil. And maybe if Cecil said there were lights, just maybe somehow there really were. He took a breath and tried to envision rough wood beneath his feet and an even row of bright lights lining the walkway. He pictured a midway of games and vendor stands of carnival food behind him. Finally he nodded. 

“I think I can see them,” he said slowly. He could feel Cecil let out an excited breath against the back of his neck, making his hair stand slightly on edge. 

“Good, good. And the carousel, can you hear the music of the calliope?” Carlos listened, but heard nothing. “Listen, Carlos. Really, _really_ listen.” Carlos focused on the mental image of a carousel, tried to hear it playing until…his mouth went slack as his eyes shot open momentarily. Cecil’s hands still darkened the world around him, but he could hear the garish music drifting lazily through the still air.

“I hear it.” The stunned words dropped from his mouth. Cecil let out a small, bright laugh. 

“One last question, my dear Carlos.” Cecil dropped his hands and leaned in teasingly close to the scientist’s ear. “Do you believe?” Carlos opened his eyes and stumbled backward in shock. There it was, exactly as he had pictured. He knelt to the boardwalk, disbelieving its existence. Tentative fingers traced along the rough wooden planks. It felt real. Slowly he rose to his feet, examining his hand, turning it this way and that and watching the dim light create shadows and flickers as it played across his skin. He turned quickly, looking for Cecil who had already wandered a short distance down the boardwalk. “Come on, then!” Cecil called over his shoulder, flashing an excited grin. Carlos hurried to catch up, still craning his head to take in the row of buildings all trimmed in gaudy colors and bright, flashing lights. He hadn’t imagined such detail into the scene, and he wondered if possibly the detail had been Cecil’s work or if maybe all the imaginary zone required was a basic idea and automatically filled in the rest. “ _Mm_ , the churro stand smells wonderful, don’t you think?” Cecil added as Carlos fell in step beside him. 

“I don’t smell…anything…” Carlos trailed off, realizing mid-sentence that he did indeed smell something and it was in fact wonderful. 

“Yes you do,” Cecil said with a wink. “I’ll spot you one, if you like.” He led Carlos over to a little unmanned food cart. Now that Carlos looked around, the entire midway seemed to be unmanned. 

“Cecil, why are there no people here?” he asked curiously, glancing around to confirm the suspicion. 

“The mind cannot create a face on its own,” Cecil replied as he flipped open his wallet and removed a few bills. “The imagination works only with faces it sees in passing. And I think pulling in real people to an imaginary zone could get a bit chaotic and probably slightly dangerous.” He slid the bills across the counter and reached into the little glass box, pulling out two churros. 

“If this place is imaginary, why did you just pay real money?” Carlos asked as he accepted the pastry. It was really the least important question on his mind at the moment, but something about the action seemed so strangely confusing that he couldn’t help but ask. Cecil shook his head, an amused smile on his lips. 

“Sweet, _adorable_ , Carlos. True character is measured by your behavior when you are alone in an imaginary world of your own creation.” He nodded matter-of-factly and turned to continue ambling down the boardwalk. Carlos remained frozen, staring in confusion at his churro. His mouth kept opening to ask a question, but his mind couldn’t settle on just one. Finally he sifted through the muddle and found the question which seemed the most pressing at the moment. 

“Cecil, is any of this real?” he asked with a frustrated little sound. 

“Taste it and see for yourself!” Cecil called back, his mouth full. Carlos took a careful bite. It tasted like cinnamon and sugar and grease, exactly as it should. It felt real enough as he chewed and swallowed. Realizing he had fallen behind again, he jogged to catch up to Cecil’s leisurely pace. 

“But, Cecil, how is this even possible, how could any of this be real?” he ran a hand through his hair, trying to comprehend the sights and smells and tastes that every sense was assuring him truly existed. 

“You’re asking questions again,” Cecil reminded as he folded the leftover wrapper of his churro and slipped it into the back pocket of his pinstripe pants. “What have I spent all evening trying to tell you?” 

“To stop asking unknowable questions,” Carlos mumbled. Cecil looked over at him expectantly. “And to just appreciate existing,” he paraphrased. 

“Isn’t observation part of science?” Cecil asked, stopping and turning to face him. 

“ _Part_ of science,” Carlos emphasized.  “The other part is explanation.”  

“Well, explanation, as we have discussed, isn’t exactly a very possible thing here in Night Vale. But observation is. So observe. Observe and study and take it all in.” Cecil gestured to the lights of the boardwalk all around them. “Write down what you find, write every detail so you never forget. Share it with your research team, compare all the things you observe. But don’t question _why_ those things happen; don’t ask _how_ they’re possible. Just-“ he reached out, resting his hands on Carlos’s shoulders, his violet eyes sparkling. “Just observe.” Carlos nodded numbly, for the first time almost beginning to understand what Cecil had been trying to say. It was a shift to be sure. Carlos had loved answers all his life. Facts were truth, and the truth was safety and surety even when people and feelings were unstable and couldn’t be trusted. To never truly know the answers meant to live perpetually on the brink between losing and being lost. But maybe Cecil was right. Maybe Night Vale really was different, and maybe here not knowing was the best way to stay safe. Definitely the best way to stay sane. Cecil’s lips tilted in a mischievous half smile and for a moment, Carlos thought the man might kiss him, but instead he let his hands fall back to his sides, turned, and wandered on down the boardwalk. Carlos kept up better this time, falling into rhythm next to him. As they walked along in silence, the carousel’s music being the only sound, a sudden thought leapt into Carlos’s mind. 

“Cecil, is this a date?” he blurted unexpectedly. He had been so focused on the scientific aspect of the outing that he hadn’t exactly considered the possibility that he had completely misread Cecil’s intentions until that very moment. Cecil stopped mid-stride and looked at him suddenly. 

“No,” the radio host assured quickly. “I mean, not that this wouldn’t make for a lovely date.” He flashed a careful smile. “But, no. I brought you here simply to show you that not everything unexplainable is inherently bad. Night Vale can be truly wonderful sometimes.” Carlos nodded, relieved. It wasn’t that he would have minded going on a date with Cecil. Hell, he had almost asked the man to climb into bed with him less than 24 hours ago. But now was neither the time nor the place for romance. There were still too many questions that needed answering before he even considered the possibility of love. One of the questions happened to be if love even existed, but he was still procrastinating testing that hypothesis again.

“So now that I finally believe, what do we do now?” Carlos asked with a shrug. Cecil laughed and shook his head, crossing his arms. 

“Yet another question,” he teased good-naturedly. “Well, I brought you here so you could learn to experience rather than explain, so I suppose we should experience!” Carlos smiled slightly. For not being a date, it sounded rather like a date, but after all the stress he’d been under for the past few months, he figured one night couldn’t really hurt. Besides, he told himself, if all he was going to do was observe, it was his scientific duty to observe as thoroughly as possible. 

“Shall we start at the midway?” he asked, nodding towards the row of stalls each advertising its own probably rigged game. The first one they ducked into was a simple ring toss. A rectangle of glass bottles stood a few feet behind the counter, and an array of large stuffed creatures lined the walls. Carlos dug in his pockets for change, but Cecil smoothly tossed two quarters on the counter. He leaned over and pulled out two sets of six wooden rings, sliding one down to Carlos. Hand-eye coordination was a bit like words for Carlos - unnatural and bulky and thankfully not a major part of being a scientist. He was fine enough at precise actions like measuring grams of sifted powders into flasks or delicately adjusting slides beneath a microscope, but games and sports were not his calling. One-by-one he tossed each ring, missing each time by embarrassing margins. Cecil hooked two of his rings, and helped himself to his allotted tickets as a reward. Carlos sighed and glanced over the rim of his glasses at the prizes hung in even rows along the wall. None of them caught his eye except a large orange creature that seemed to be some sort of goldfish crossed with a panda. Being almost thirty years old and the proud holder of a PhD, he wasn’t interested in stuffed animals normally. This one however kept blinking at him and cooing softly, wriggling its nose. He just wanted a better look – _for science_. 

“Hey, Cecil, if I climbed onto the counter, do you think I could reach that-“ he didn’t know the proper name for the animal and didn’t want to offend it by calling it something incorrect, so he just pointed. “That one?” Cecil clucked his tongue disapprovingly. 

“Don’t be silly, Carlos. I think we both have more integrity than that. If you want a stuffed animal, you can have my tickets, but I think we should win it fair and square.” Carlos laughed, and realized it had been a very long time since he had actually laughed – not out of frustration. 

“Come on, let’s find something I’m better at.” He pulled Cecil by the shirt sleeve down a few booths to a target shooting stand. 

“This?” Cecil asked in surprise. “You’re better at this?” Carlos shrugged innocently. 

“I might be.” He felt a wave of guilt as Cecil slipped two quarters across the counter again. Cecil noticed his expression and gave him a reassuring smile. 

“Don’t worry about it, it was my idea to come out here after all.” He pushed up the edges of his sleeves, revealing those strange tattoos again, though this time they seemed more geometric and primal. Maybe tattoos in Night Vale were unstable and ever-changing like so many other facets of daily life, or maybe it was just yet another anomaly unique to the strange radio host. Cecil leaned over the realistic-looking rifle, carefully adjusting the sights. Carlos wondered if gun safety was something all Night Vale residents were forced to learn. He knew there was an NRA chapter and it seemed unusual enough that it might just be true. As if reading his mind Cecil added, “We learn how to shoot in the eighth grade. When we move up to high school we’re each given our own mandatory firearm.” He fired his three shots slowly and methodically, each one hitting the ring just around the center dot. Both accurate _and_ precise, Carlos noted. He added the observation to the growing list of facts he was beginning to learn about Cecil. Carlos leaned casually over his own gun, adjusting it much more rapidly and firing his shots in quick succession. Each one hit the center mark exactly, causing a bell to ring below the counter. Cecil stared at him, violet eyes wide. 

“What? I grew up on the bad side of Chicago, I had to learn a few things along the way.” Carlos grinned, leaning over the counter and tearing off a strip of tickets. Some part of him enjoyed surprising Cecil, who never seemed surprised by anything. 

“Ooh! Ski-ball!” Cecil suddenly chimed, sounding exactly like Carlos assumed he had as a little kid. “Carlos, can we play?” Carlos nodded, and Cecil ran ahead, slipping a quarter in two adjacent stalls. Carlos was alright at ski-ball. He threw the first couple balls, landing them somewhere near the middle. The last one hit the bottom, finishing out his score right around average. He glanced at Cecil’s score which was at least triple his own. Cecil expertly tossed his last ball, landing it directly in the center. It wasn’t a perfect score but it was close. A sudden idea formed in Carlos’s mind as he watched Cecil lean casually against the machine, waiting for it to issue his hard-earned tickets. Cecil with his glossy, pale hair that never seemed to move even though the tattoos he tried so hard to hide seemed to move quite a bit. Cecil with his curious habits and his mesmerizing voice. Carlos was a little surprised at how quickly his mind formulated scenarios to get close to the man, but they had decided it wasn’t a date, so he shrugged away his hesitation and cleared his throat. 

“Do you have another quarter?” he asked casually. Cecil flipped him a coin, and he caught it with uncharacteristic ease and slipped it into the machine. “Now show me how you did that,” Carlos nodded towards the score still blinking across Cecil’s machine. Cecil did a terrible job of hiding the flash of excitement that crossed his face. 

“Okay,” he began, leaning close to Carlos without actually touching him. “So you just take the ball and you pull it back with momentum,” he demonstrated the smooth motion, “and follow through by shifting your weight to the front a little.” 

“Like this then?” Carlos did a poor imitation, purposely bending his elbow slightly. 

“Here, may I?” Cecil asked, carefully stepping behind Carlos. A flush of red crept to the scientist’s face as his plan succeeded more smoothly than he expected. Cecil gingerly rested his chin on the scientist’s shoulder, tentatively slipping his slender fingers over Carlos’s hand. Carlos tried to focus even though Cecil’s proximity was dizzying. Cecil smoothly guided his hand back and then shifted forward, tapping his wrist when it was time to let go of the ball. It rolled along and landed perfectly in the top-scoring cup. “There, now you’ve got it,” Cecil said proudly, as he began to let go. 

“Accuracy doesn’t necessarily correlate positively with precision,” Carlos sputtered quickly, glancing over at Cecil whose face was only inches from his own. For another moment, he wondered if Cecil was about to kiss him, so he quickly looked back down, reaching for the next ball. 

“Alright then,” Cecil said quietly, reaching back and placing his hand over the scientist’s once more. They tossed ball after ball until the machine dinged with a perfect score. Cecil bounced up and down on the balls of his feet like a little kid as the machine spat out a seemingly endless stream of tickets. 

“We make a pretty good team,” Carlos noted, nudging Cecil’s arm and hoping the light from the machine was dim enough to hide the deep red flush to his cheeks. 

As the night wore on they found themselves riding the carousel multiple times in succession at Cecil’s suggestion. They took turns changing mounts from pegacorns to shapeless amoebas to an invisible object that Carlos didn’t trust until Cecil rode it first to prove it was actually really there. “Where to next?” Cecil asked dizzily as they stumbled away from the carousel, Carlos dragging his oversized, blinking stuffed creature behind them. _It’s all for science_ he reminded himself, choosing to ignore the fact that he hadn’t smiled this much for years even prior to moving to Night Vale. 

“How about the ferris wheel?” Carlos suggested. 

“I’m not sure there is a ferris wheel here..” Cecil began hesitantly. 

“Oh, I _believe_ there is,” Carlos said mischievously, pointing to the large wheel that he had just imagined into existence.  Night Vale’s brand of logic was proving to be far more fun than he had bargained for.  

“Well,” Cecil said with a whistle. “So there is!” They loaded the strange fish-creature into its own car for safety reasons and climbed into the next one together. Cecil pointed out a few major Night Vale landmarks including the Ralph’s (not the dog park near it, Carlos noticed) and the station where he worked with its blinking light that kept watch over the town through the night. They spent a long moment of comfortable silence watching the lights glimmering above Radon Canyon before Carlos thought to ask what the bright glow far out on the horizon was. “We don’t speak of those lights,” Cecil replied abruptly. Carlos nodded, assuming it was just another one of the unspoken rules of Night Vale. Cecil shifted uncomfortably for a moment before admitting, “that’s Desert Bluffs.” Carlos didn’t understand the hostility that Cecil bore towards the town, but was amused by the way his nose always wrinkled when talking about the place. 

“One last place we haven’t observed yet,” Carlos said as they jumped out of the rapidly spinning ferris wheel, leaving the fish-creature to gurgle happily in its car for another spin. They ambled up the boardwalk, wandering into the hall of mirrors. They both began to laugh at the contortions and color and species changes their reflections underwent. One mirror even turned them both into distorted renditions of Rick Astley. At the last mirror, Carlos looked unreasonably tall and lean and Cecil was perfectly round. “Souvenir?” Carlos slid his phone out of his pocket. “Smile, Cecil!” he said as he flashed the photo. Later he would discover that Cecil’s eyes had a strange tapetum-like reaction to camera flash and that they had turned out almost entirely white in the photo, but at the time he just allowed Cecil to lead him through the dark tunnel and back out onto the boardwalk. It had been the best night Carlos could recall in a long time, even if he still wasn’t quite sure he believed any of it had actually happened. He tried not to let it matter as Cecil led him back towards the highway, the entire way recounting a story of the time he was arrested for looking identical to visiting royalty. Doubt winning out over contentment, Carlos glanced back only once. Disappointment welled in the pit of his stomach as his suspicions were confirmed; it had all been nothing more than a hallucination or a mirage of some sort.  Believing in things hadn’t made them real.  There was nothing real out there at all - only darkness punctuated by sprigs of sagebrush and a few cacti further out.  

Cecil was wrong.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> other fun notes on this chapter: it was partially inspired by falling asleep on a road trip listening to "Behind the Sea" by P!atD. Also it originally took place as a fluffy little oneshot set at the Night Vale Harbor & Waterfront Recreation Area, and was the first thing I ever wrote for this fandom. I like it much better as a part of this story though. c: New chapter will probably happen tomorrow since I'm trying to get this story all done before holiday stuff starts getting crazy


	10. Partially Stars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> We understand so much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _warning for mentions of blood and injuries in this chapter_

Carlos had tried to be more tolerant of Night Vale in the week that followed his and Cecil’s expedition to the imaginary zone, but hard as he tried he couldn’t seem to grasp the idea of simply accepting the world around him without question.  Instead the questions ate away at him with renewed fervor; the sleepless nights grew longer; the thoughts slipped further towards madness.  The deeper he attempted to dig into Night Vale, the more confounding the twisted little town seemed to become until one day as he tried to save it, it tried to claim him.  

The first thought that crossed the scientist’s mind was that his pulse was very loud.  Extremely loud.  Too loud.  His eyes fluttered open to a dizzy out-of-focus mess of panicked faces.  There were hands touching him, pinning him to the floor, crushing his ribcage.  The next thought that crossed his mind was that dying didn’t hurt as badly as he expected.  Somewhere on the fringe of his consciousness he knew at least one - maybe two - ribs were fractured.  Breathing seemed to make the faces above him even more panicked and cause the warm leaking sensation surrounding him to spread.  So Carlos closed his eyes and held his breath as best he could and let his mind wander off somewhere safe and dry and far away so that he could die pleasantly. 

He didn’t know how long passed until the pain brought him back around.  By his estimation it could have been hours - days even, but the same panicked faces surrounded him when he finally opened his eyes.  In the mere minutes or moments that must have transpired, the whole world had shifted.  There was fire shooting through his chest and down his right arm, which were both in the process of being bandaged by Teddy Williams, the slightly deranged owner of the Desert Rose Bowling Alley & Arcade Fun Complex.  Carlos prayed to the deity he didn’t actually believe in for Teddy Williams to be slightly more in touch with reality than his previous actions seemed to indicate.  For better or for worse, the world was coming back into what focus it could, given the scientist had lost his glasses somewhere in the scuffle.  It was tilting however.  And not simply literally, though the world also seemed to be literally tilting at the edges of Carlos’s vision due to the loss of blood.  Everything else about the world also seemed to be spinning, adjusting, realigning itself precisely 180 degrees from where it belonged.  He pushed away the excruciating pain that had begun to pulsate through his entire body; he pushed away the concerned, hushed voices until they became a dull murmur; he pushed away everything and focused on the strange new angled tilt of reality that was clicking into place.  

That is to say - Carlos the scientist finally understood.  

It had taken a whole year and nearly dying to do so, but suddenly he understood everything.  All the scientific explanations and experiments and orderly rows of letters and numbers he had trusted in all his life were so pointless, when all along it had been so simple.  Carlos understood that the questions he had asked for so long really had been wrong after all.  He understood that the world was so much bigger and stranger than his books had always told him.  He understood that all he would ever know with certainty from this point forward was what his curiosity could show him.  The pain had begun to throb again; the worried sounds had begun to grow louder, but this time he heard a familiar voice amidst the murmur.  Somewhere there was a radio playing, as there always seemed to be in Night Vale, and somewhere Cecil was saying his name.  There was something wrong with his voice - it was broken, fractured like the rib that Teddy Williams had just set back into place with an agonizing stab of pain.  Cecil was crying, and it was the only thing Carlos cared about.  And suddenly, he understood that too.  

It was where he had gone.  As life was slipping away from him in a puddle blooming crimson around his body, he had closed his eyes and let his mind wander.  In those quiet moments, he found himself lost in lavender eyes that sparkled iridescent with the reflection of fictitious constellations, in a shy smile that flickered like the flame of a candle, and a musical little laugh that seemed oddly higher pitched than the words that surrounded it.  His final moments hadn’t been a montage of his life or a list of all his regrets or a dark tunnel with a bright light.  They had been Cecil.  

_“I’m fine,”_ Carlos told the people hovering over him; his voice was shaking.  _“I can walk,”_ he assured an objecting Teddy Williams; the floor was reeling beneath every step.  It didn’t matter.  None of it mattered now that he finally understood everything Cecil had tried to warn him, to tell him, to show him - and just shy of too late.  The drive to Arby’s was painful and difficult, but the moment he saw Cecil across the parking lot, the pain didn’t matter anymore either.  Their conversation was quiet and words were few, but that too seemed vastly unimportant, because Carlos was beginning to learn that words weren’t always necessary with Cecil.  Somehow so much of the time, he just _knew._

So Carlos sat there next to him on the hood of his car, one arm bandaged and still slightly bleeding, and they watched the lights for several tranquil minutes while he tried to piece together this new brand of logic.  It was letting go, and he had never been good at letting go - not of his mother after she passed away when he was young, not of the bitterness when his heart had been broken by happy endings gone wrong, and now not of the unwavering trust he had put in reality for all his life.  But as he looked over at the man content to sit quietly next to him, Carlos knew that for the first time he would have something steady to hold on to.  So he reached out and placed a careful hand on Cecil’s knee - a tether to this first and most basic fact in his strange new comprehension of reality.  Almost instinctively, Cecil readjusted to gently rest his head on the scientist’s good shoulder.  And that was how they stayed for a long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's actually kinda interesting that the turning point in their whole relationship happens to be the shortest chapter so far, but I wanted it to be a bit scattered and unfocused since it's from Carlos's POV after all. also: the scene at the Arby's is the cutest thing ever and I intentionally didn't want to ruin it with whatever my version would be so I wanted to leave their conversation pretty much up to canon/reader interpretation and focus more on what it means for Carlos and his new outlook on life.  
> Thanks so much for all the likes and reviews, I'm seriously so happy that other people are enjoying reading this as much as I'm enjoying writing it! <3


	11. Sunday Morning Stasis

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's funny how a brush with death can make life fall back into place.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the title for this chapter is from the weather of One Year Later, which is one of my very favorite weather forecasts from Night Vale.

The Sunday morning following the attack at the Desert Rose Bowling Alley & Arcade Fun Complex, Carlos found himself walking quite accidentally, or possibly _not_ so accidentally, down Cecil’s street.  He recognized the little fountain that existed when it wasn’t Tuesday and the magenta ivy crawling along the brick exterior of the even little row of townhouses.  Outside the ornate turquoise door, he paused for a brief moment to consider his reasons for the visit.  Cecil hadn’t spoken to him since the evening they had spent at the Arby’s.  The weather had ended and he had returned to the station to finish his broadcast, and Carlos had gone back to his own little apartment and collapsed on the bed and let life around him spiral into its new focus.  Now one week later the whole world had changed.  Carlos had changed.  And that, he decided, was precisely why he was standing on the steps outside Cecil’s door.  If anyone should know about the scientist’s perception shift, it should be the one who had jump started it in the first place.  

Cecil was all smiles when he opened the door.  “I was wondering when you’d stop by,” he said easily as he shut the door behind the scientist.  “I was just about to get breakfast going.”  

“You knew I’d be here?” Carlos asked distractedly as he took in Cecil’s home for the second time.  Like the rest of Night Vale, it was so imperceptibly different than it had been before his accident.  The colors seemed a little brighter, the light a little softer, the air a little more breathable.  

“I was hoping,” Cecil admitted as he wound his way through the little dining room and into the kitchen.  Carlos lingered a few steps behind, taking in details he hadn’t noticed before - a potted flowering plant that appeared to have teeth the color of cotton candy, a small framed photograph of a slightly younger Cecil and Josie in matching florescent green guayaberas, a mason jar filled with ballpoint pens and broken pencils and even a crayon or two.  “How have you been feeling?”  Cecil asked, snatching the scientist’s attention back to the kitchen. 

“Better,” Carlos replied as he absently traced along the path of the crescent scar that was surprisingly painless for his having only graduated from wearing the sling the previous day.  Everything was so similar in the little kitchen as the last time they had been in the exact same places doing the exact same things, but it felt so vastly different.  There was a strange sense of freedom as he watched Cecil work away at mixing up rice flour and sugar in a little dish.  Even though he was still technically nothing more than a guest in an acquaintance’s home, Carlos had a vague feeling that he was there on some unspoken invitation this time.  

“Sleeping better too?” Cecil asked as he shuffled through a large drawer of small glass jars.  

“Sleeping more anyway.”  Carlos leaned against the counter and folded his arms thoughtfully.  “I keep having this one strange dream about-”

“The sting ray invasion, yeah,” Cecil finished as he held up one of the jars for closer inspection.  “I think it’s some sort of coded propaganda for the new aquarium wing in the Children’s Museum.  Shared dreams are by far the most obnoxious form of advertisement if you ask me.”  Carlos just shook his head with a resigned little smile.  Of course Night Vale _would_ have some way of controlling dreams.  “Do you like nutmeg in your pancakes?” Cecil offered, unscrewing the lid of the little jar.  The scientist shrugged.  “You will.”  

Carlos observed the steady, practiced motions as Cecil stirred at the batter.  His tattoos were showing again, this time tendrils that curled and drifted like smoke into billowing shapes.  The same strange liberating feeling seemed to tilt the scale in his curiosity’s favor.  “When did you get those?” he asked, nodding towards the indigo patterns.  Cecil stopped mixing and glanced down as if only realizing now that he had tattoos creeping down his arms.  

“Oh, you know, here and there,” he shrugged before resuming his stirring.  

“Do they have meaning?” Carlos pressed, not satisfied with the vague reply.  Cecil gave him a strangely perplexed look.  

“Of course they have meaning, Carlos.  Everything has a meaning.”  Cecil set the bowl carefully on the countertop and reached around for a pan, tugging discreetly at his sleeves as he did so until they covered the patterns across his skin.  

“Well I like them,” Carlos added quietly.  Cecil looked at him curiously again, as if trying to decide if he was being sarcastic.  

“Thank you,” he said finally, pushing his sleeves back up with a hesitant smile.  

“So do you cook often?” Carlos asked to change the subject.  “Pancakes excluded from discussion,” he added with a grin.  

Cecil laughed.  “I’m not a chef or anything, but I can hold my own I suppose.  You can only eat at restaurants so much before it gets a bit dull after a while.”  

“I’m not much for restaurants either,” Carlos agreed.  “I don’t like eating alone.  It can just get depressing.”

“Oh, I _never_ eat alone.”  Cecil spun around the small space and retrieved a relatively normal mug from one of the overhead cabinets.  “You know the Secret Police are legally obligated to accompany you, right?”  Carlos shook his head.  “Oh, absolutely.  You see, most people are under 24-hour assigned surveillance.  If you’re ever by yourself somewhere, you can talk to them and they’re legally obligated to join you and listen.  It’s the only truly _enjoyable_ way to spend evenings alone if you ask me,” Cecil babbled on as he filled the mug with the same strange coffee-like substance and handed it to the scientist.  “You should try it sometime.”  Carlos got the distinct impression as Cecil’s fingers lingered an extra moment on the mug to trace ever so softly against his as he accepted it that he wouldn’t be spending evenings alone much longer.  Cecil cleared his throat with a little cough and turned back to the butter melting in his frying pan.  “What about you, can you cook?”  

“The microwave is my secret weapon,” Carlos admitted between sips of coffee.  

“Well can you make pancakes?”  Not liking the direction the conversation was headed, Carlos crossed his arms tighter across his chest and shook his head.  

“Not like yours.”  

“They don’t have to be like mine,” Cecil assured him, tugging the sleeve of the scientists’s lab coat towards the stovetop.  “I just want to see what you can do.”  Cecil propped an elbow on the counter and rested his chin against his palm to watch the proceedings.  Carlos was not entirely inept at cooking, but he hadn’t done much of it since his own little kitchen was the source of the strange breathing sounds in his apartment.  He tried to remember how his grandmother used to make pancakes on the weekends.  She always started by drawing a smiling face in the pan and letting it brown.  His attempt to do the same did not go as smoothly.  

“What’s that?” Cecil asked quietly as he tilted his head curiously to one side.  

“A cyclops,” Carlos mumbled as he poured a small ring of batter around the one-eyed creature he had accidentally created.  

“They prefer the term ‘monocular being.’  Cyclops is a bit offensive,” Cecil corrected gently.  “You should probably flip that.”  Carlos poked at the edge to find it was already stuck to the pan.  With some effort he scraped it enough to flip.  The blackened monocular flapjack grinned up at Carlos tauntingly.  “You can try again, it’s alright.” Cecil reassured.  Carlos scraped the pancake onto a plate and poured another one without a face this time.  “So last time you were here you mentioned there’s a breathing sound in your apartment.  What is it like?”  

Carlos shrugged.  “It’s not really all that loud.  More just eerie I’d say.  Sometimes it hisses a bit.  It seems to only come from one room.”  The next pancake flipped with more ease.

“Sounds like a poltergeist.  You know, I’ve been taking some defensive dark arts evening classes up at the community college.  I’m top of my class in exorcisms if you’d like me to give it a shot this afternoon,” Cecil offered.

“That would be great, but-” the scientist’s response was cut short by the acrid smell of smoke.  He swore under his breath and tried to pry the second failed attempt from the pan.  Cecil just laughed again.  “You might want to take over before I set off your fire alarms,” Carlos said in a fluster as he abandoned the pan entirely.  

“Fire alarms?” Cecil asked as he casually took over the rescuing of breakfast.  “Why would I need an alarm in case of fire?  Flash flood alarms, sure, but a _fire_ alarm?”  

Carlos shook his head.  “I’ll never adjust to this place,” he muttered as he went back to crossing his arms and watching Cecil do the cooking.  

“On the contrary, I think you’re doing rather wonderfully in comparison to the last time you were here,” Cecil smiled.  “Speaking of adjusting, have you talked to any of your scientists since-” his voice stumbled again, catching slightly on the words.  “Since the incident?”  

“I’ve talked to all of them actually.  Well, the ones that are still here.  Three went home a few months ago, and our archaeologist Tom he...”  The scientist’s eyes lowered to the pale slats of the wood floor for a long moment before he cleared his throat.  “Most of the others were offered jobs up at the college.  Apparently all their new supervisor does is yell at them in Portuguese so all but one were eager to come back to work for me on the condition I stop asking them for explanations they don’t have.”  

“So science will continue as normal?” Cecil asked with a grin as he flipped a stack of flawless smiling pancakes out onto a plate.  

“I wouldn’t say normal, but it will go on,” Carlos chuckled.  “Actually that’s what I came here to tell you.  I’m leaving for Phoenix in-” he checked his watch, which read 3:49 AM. “Actually I should probably leave right about now.  I’m catching a 6:30 flight home.”  Cecil abruptly ceased his fidgeting with the coffee pot, sloshing a bit of the brown liquid onto his burgundy shirt.  “I’ll be back,” Carlos amended quickly.  “I just have to work on getting my grant renewed.  Twelve months went by fast, and now I need to somehow come up with something to present so I can keep my funding.”  

“Are you going by yourself?  I can give you a ride to Phoenix if you need it,” Cecil offered as he dug out a plastic container to send with Carlos.  

“Actually I’m taking my whole team with me.  Except Jake who swears he’s soulbound to one of the hooded figures now and can’t leave the city limits.”

“That's rough,” Cecil commented as he sorted through the stack of flapjacks for the most evenly browned specimens.  

“That’s just Jake.  Anyway, it shouldn’t take more than a week or two.  I might need a few extra days just to sort out a few personal matters.”  

Cecil glanced up at him, eyes a curious mint green.  “Personal matters?” 

Carlos was thoughtful for a moment as he tried to find the best words.  “I guess I just left home with the doors open, y’know?  I didn’t end things the way I should have.  If you can believe it, I used to be scared of changing the status quo.”  Cecil laughed again in his musical little way.  “I just need to get my past put away and close the doors behind me before I can think about a future,” the scientist added.  He risked a cautious glance over at Cecil who had taken to leaning against the counter next to him.  The radio host was smiling his cheshire grin at the floor, his face slightly more flushed than usual.  

“Okay,” Cecil finally said quietly, handing the tupperware of flapjacks to Carlos.  A strange nervous silence settled between them like two teenagers unsure how to end a first date.  Carlos pushed his haphazardly-taped glasses up on his nose in a fidgety habit he had almost forgotten he had.  

“I’ll call you when I get back,” he stuttered as he stepped towards the entryway to the dining room.  

“I look forward to it, Carlos.”  Cecil’s voice still carefully purred the syllables to his name in a strange adoration that made the scientist smile.  His smile didn’t falter during the entire drive to Phoenix as Andrea played country music obnoxiously loud in her little station wagon, or even as he was singled out by airport security for the strange radiation levels in his luggage that set off the detectors.  He had been through hell and back in the past year, but if that’s what it had taken for him to end up with a half-dozen smiling pancakes in his carry-on and a new text message from a peculiar radio host on his cell phone, then following the mysterious lights in the desert all those years ago had been more than worth it.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So there you have it, the last official chapter! There's going to be an epilogue, but it's written in a slightly different style so I figured it should have its own little chapter that will be posted later today. This particular chapter I wrote to be a parallel to the second half of Paper Fortune to show the subtle shift in their dynamic towards less of a desperate cling and more of an actual (semi-)normal relationship. There are technically two versions of this that each end drastically differently because one of them led into a slightly cliched but amusing extra little detour. It was the original idea for where the story would go but I changed it because it messed with the flow this close to the end. If you would like to read the original ending anyway, it is posted in two parts - [Chapter 11 v.2](http://carryonmywaywardtimel0rd.tumblr.com/post/67301048150/neat-ch-11-v-2-0-sunday-morning-stasis) and [Chapter 12](http://carryonmywaywardtimel0rd.tumblr.com/post/67307707036/neat-ch-12-brave). If you like secret police doing interpretive dance, exorcisms in Double Spanish, or adorable cat videos then this is the alternate ending for you! Both versions lead back to the epilogue in slightly different ways.


	12. "Neat!"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 395 days, 17 hours, 34 minutes, and 21 seconds have passed since a perfect scientist said ‘hello, it’s nice to meet you’ to an unusual and slightly enamored radio host. 395 days, 17 hours, 34 minutes, and 21 seconds can change so very much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This whole story has been from Carlos's POV, but I figured for the epilogue it was permissible to do an even split of each one's reaction.

Cecil didn’t notice the shadows absorbing the town on the drive home.  He didn’t notice he had forgotten to lock his front door behind him as he discarded his keys on the side table in a slapdash fashion.  He didn’t even notice that his flannel pajamas didn’t match, because Cecil was far too busy spinning circles in his bedroom and clutching a pillow to his face to muffle his incoherent, high-pitched squeaking.  After several minutes he came to a dead stop and dropped the pillow to the floor.  

“He kissed me,” Cecil whispered to himself.  The words felt strangely alive as he spoke them.  “He kissed me,” he announced to his empty room before he buried his face in his hands to hide the vibrant violet blush in his cheeks.  “Carlos kissed me,” Cecil sighed as he hugged his arms to himself and spun in another dizzy little circle.  It was late, but he was too excited to be tired.  He was distantly aware that his eyes were most likely flickering through an entire rainbow by now and that beneath his horribly clashing pajamas the ink across his skin was wriggling so frantically that it tickled, but he couldn’t help himself.  The news was practically bursting out of him, begging for an audience.  He wanted to shout it out the window so all the quiet little town could hear.  Acting on that exact whim, he crossed to the window and opened it easily.  On second thought, shouting it to the night would be useless since the void would probably absorb all the words before anyone at all could hear them anyway.  Cecil settled for hissing at one of the bushes beneath the windowpane.  

“ _Psst,_ Belinda.”  The bush was quiet for a moment until one of the leaves twitched.  

“What is it, Cecil?” the secret police officer within the shrubbery sighed.  

Cecil brightened as he flopped backwards over the windowpane, dangling his mess of ivory hair upside down in the warm evening breeze.  “Carlos kissed me tonight.”  

“Did he now,” Belinda replied in a monotone.  

“Yep, he kissed me,” Cecil confirmed.  “Right there in my car, leaned right over and kissed me.  It was so wonderful and gentle and it tasted a little bit like spearmint chapstick-”

“Yes we know, Cecil,” Belinda muttered impatiently.  “We were surveilling the entire date.”  Cecil shot a dirty look at the shrub.  

“We both agree that the bit at Gino’s was especially sweet,” the bush on the opposite end of the window mollified.  Cecil’s smile reappeared.  

“Is that you, Everett?  Good to hear you’re back to working nights again.”  Cecil folded his arms lazily behind his head as he gazed up at the spattering of intrepid stars that danced bravely across the void.  “I was a little nervous at first, I mean, he seemed so distracted.  But then he took off his glasses to clean them during dinner and his eyes - _oh his eyes._ They’re like melted chocolate with a touch of honey mixed in.  I just wanted to drown in them, Everett.”  

“His eyes are very brown,” Everett agreed, visibly shifting uncomfortably within his covert burrow.  

“Cecil, it’s past curfew,” Belinda interrupted harshly. 

“What?  I’m inside,” Cecil intoned frowardly, though he did readjust himself to a sitting position on the windowsill so his entire body was technically within the confines of his house.  “Don’t be jealous just because you don’t have a perfect scientist who kisses you goodnight,” he added with a smug little smirk.  The greenery sighed audibly.  Cecil shifted restlessly for a few quiet minutes - first resting his chin on one knee, then leaning back against the windowframe, and settling for dangling both legs outside the window in the slight summer breeze.  Finally the questions again became too much to hold inside.  “Hey, Everett, did you see the part where we did science together?  That was so... _neat_ ,” Cecil sighed dreamily.  

“It was very neat,” Everett agreed awkwardly.  “Look, it’s getting late, Cecil, why don’t you get some sleep?  Maybe you can tell your radio show all about the date tomorrow night,” the secret police officer politely suggested.  

“That’s a fantastic idea!” Cecil bubbled.  “I’m surprised I didn’t think of that!”  

“Great.  Now go to bed,” Belinda droned in her same monotone.  

“Goodnight, Cecil,” Everett offered more kindly. 

“Goodnight,” Cecil murmured to the bushes as they went back to covert surveillance and he went back to sitting, knees tucked to his chin on the windowsill.  His eyes had settled on a delighted amethyst, his tattoos swirled into contented little spirals as euphoria slowly drifted its way into a more placid form of bliss.  He would go to bed, but first he allowed himself a few more minutes to watch the night sky sparkle with the flickering light of dying stars and the glistening moon hanging low overhead.  For just one night he chose to believe it wasn’t a projection sponsored by a malicious government agency.  His perfect, beautiful Carlos had kissed him.  Tonight, anything was possible. 

\--

Carlos closed the door to his lab quickly and leaned against it, eyes squinted shut tight in embarrassment.  “‘ _Self-reliant_ ’ - really?!” he muttered to himself. 

“Date went well then?” Andrea asked.  Carlos’s eyes shot open to what should have been his empty laboratory, but was instead filled with the hum of electrical machinery and ten inquisitive scientists.  

“I thought you all went home at 5,” he stuttered, slipping out of his weekend-casual lab coat and back into his considerably less-spiffy everyday lab coat.  

“New job, new hours,” Bethenny shrugged as she held a thermometer in a beaker of florescent blue liquid.  “Besides, a town filling with shadows and you think we’d stay home?”

“We’ve got things mostly covered here if you weren’t quite done...” Andrea nodded suggestively towards the door.  Carlos ignored her and walked through the aisle of tables, peering over his team’s work.  

“Unless you wanted to invite him back in here, in which case we can _totally_ get out of your way,” Jake chimed as he retrieved a slightly luminescent version of the blue liquid from a vortex mixer.  

“Not that it’s anyone’s business, but I think a first date is a bit early for that,” Carlos quipped as he stopped to retrieve one of Arnst’s equations scribbled across several sheets of paper and pinned to the corkboard.  

“Tell me you at least kissed him,” Andrea added as he approached her microscope where she had managed to pin down a small shadowy patch between two glass slides.  

“ _Okay_ ,” Carlos interjected.  “You’ve all done a great job so far, I think I can figure the rest out from here.”  Several of the scientists shared knowing glances and covert little grins as they filed out of the laboratory.  Once he was sure he was alone, Carlos allowed himself a little moment to properly analyze the results of the evening’s events.  Ever since he had gotten back to Night Vale, the hazy glow of a potential romance with Cecil had faded into the solid fact that they were about to test the dubious hypothesis on the existence of love all over again.  This terrifying realization gave the scientist jittery butterflies and apparently rendered him more or less mute around Cecil, except to say ridiculous things.  “‘ _Oh, thinking’s just what scientists do!_ ’” he mimicked in a falsetto as he double-checked the notes on the glowing cyan antidote.  “Yes, Carlos, because scientists are socially awkward idiots apparently capable of little else,” he mumbled to himself.  “‘ _I’ve been thinking about you,_ ’ ‘ _I’ve been thinking you should roll up your sleeves a little farther because tattoos are kinda sexy_ ,’ literally a hundred possible variations to that sentence and just - ‘ _I’ve been thinking_ ’?”  He sighed and leaned back in the chair, swirling the beaker in one hand.  The blue glowed vibrantly with the slight movement.  All calculations seemed to point to it being the most effective antidote to the strange shadow plague.  “At least you kissed him,” Carlos whispered more to himself than to the phosphorescent liquid.  He was proud of himself for that much; the rest of the date may have gone less smoothly than planned, but at least he had worked up the nerve to kiss the disappointment right out of Cecil’s expression at the end.  And then he ran away and hid.  

With a groan he snatched up the liquid and headed for the door.  The best course of action to assure the easiest spread would be to pour it into the town’s water reservoir down at the treatment facility.  Carlos tried to remind himself as he overthought every detail of the date for the nth time that first dates were always a little awkward.  “Really though the best part was the tree, I mean, why not just make up fake scientific tests because that makes perfect sense for a first date!” he muttered as he fumbled with the key to lock up the lab behind him.  

“He thought it was neat,” said the recycling bin.  Carlos nearly jumped backwards at the completely unanticipated reply.  The recycling bin was known for gurgling, but never for speaking.

“Um, excuse me?” he very politely asked the recycling bin.  

Another voice piped up from behind the base of the streetlamp.  “The science on the tree.  Our sources confirm he was heard describing the event as ‘ _neat._ ’”  The streetlamp was what clicked the fact into place in his mind that these must be the secret police that Cecil assured him were legally obligated to keep him company while they spied on all aspects of his personal life.  He wondered vaguely if they were the same officers who had arrested him before, but it wasn’t the most pressing question presently on his mind.

“‘ _Neat’_?”  Carlos repeated.  “That’s the actual word he used?”  There was a quiet mumble and a brief pause before the voice from the recycling bin spoke again. 

“Sources confirm that the word was accompanied by a breathy sigh.  Also that he was spinning circles in his bedroom and telling inanimate objects that you had kissed him.”  A smile immediately slipped its way across the scientist’s face.  Of course Cecil would tell inanimate objects.  In place of a captive radio audience, he was probably known to say quite a lot of things to his household décor.  

“Thank you,” Carlos said, stepping backwards towards his car.  

“There is a curfew in effect,” one of the secret police reminded him.  

“I know, I just need to get to the water reservoir.  I have the antidote to save the city from the shadow problem.”  He held up the still-slightly-luminescent liquid.  

“In that case, carry on,” the lamppost replied cordially.  

“Goodnight,” Carlos stuttered, taking slightly quicker steps towards the car.  

“Goodnight!” both officers replied in a disturbing unison.  

He waited until he was a few blocks away to allow himself to think about what the secret police had told him.  His car was stopped at the traffic light that glowed burnt umber - the signal for an indefinite pause.  His fingers were drumming a rhythm on the steering wheel as his mind drifted to picturing Cecil in some ridiculous shade of pajamas wandering around his bedroom babbling on in his adorably antiquated vocabulary.  “Neat,” Carlos repeated quietly.  He buried his face in his hands and muffled a laugh.  The umber light still hadn’t changed after several quiet minutes, so he peeked up beyond it at the sky that everyone in Night Vale was so insistent was void.  All he could see were the glimmering stars and the moon that seemed exceptionally close that particular night.  As he watched the night sky so brilliantly alive with light, Carlos allowed himself to postulate that something impossible might be about to happen.  For just one night, he chose to believe that maybe love was real after all.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thus ends the first chaptered work I ever actually completed start to finish! I'm not sure I've mentioned, but all my Night Vale stories all belong to the same very long collection in my head, so in the future there may be more little oneshots here or there along this same plotline. :) Thank you so much to everyone who's kept up with the story the whole way and especially to those who commented and left kudos along the way! I'm so glad other people have enjoyed the story and all my strange headcanons. You guys are the coolest!
> 
> Also in case for some odd reason you feel led to do so: feel free to follow my [tumblr](http://carryonmywaywardtimel0rd.tumblr.com/) and all that stuff


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